I’m an artist, writer, designer, photographer, hacker, typographer, illustrator, director, traveler, and popular culture enthusiast who has lived, worked, and studied in Germany, Japan, China, Spain, France, Britain, Italy, Canada, Portugal, and the United States, among other inspiring places. My passions include apocalyptic cinema, millennial tunes, and deliberate sustenance. This notebook is a collection of my stories, thoughts, and experiences, including philosophical essays on life, art,…
Mayu and I had arranged to have a video call this afternoon to chat a bit in Japanese. After all, I don't just want to be able to read and write - I want to be able to actually hold a conversation in Japanese too. Then, when the news came that there had been a severe earthquake in Kumamoto, I anxiously asked her if she was okay. My tension only eased when "I'm Okay!" popped up on my phone screen.
My decision to move away from Augsburg in two months has given me a kind of expiration date. Friends are now starting to invest their time in people who will still be around next year, rather than in someone who will soon be gone from their lives. Now I find myself wondering whether I should be sad, angry, and disappointed about this, or if this behavior is simply an honest consequence - one that…
If I had to pick one time period in Japanese music, it would be the turn of the millennium. Sure, 70s jazz is amazing, 80s city pop is a dream, and modern bands deliver too, but everything from the late nineties through the very early 2000s makes my little nerdy heart beat faster. One of my favorite artists from that era is Ami Suzuki, with her debut album SA from 1999. A year earlier, All Night…
We met up at Alina and Hue's place to celebrate our upcoming graduation with a barbecue. There was a ton of meat, grilling cheese, vegetables, dips, bread, and homemade salads. Everything was delicious, especially with mustard, which I rediscovered my love for recently. Mustard is the best thing in the world. Some people played a card game with unicorns that nobody understood. Afterward, I went…
When I write, work, or wash the dishes, I like to have Hiroyuki Sawano's live performances playing in the background. While I consider Yoko Kanno a crazy genius, I find his work poppier and more accessible. One of my favorite performances comes from his latest Billboard concert, where Xai sang StarRingChild. I love her positive energy. And I actually think her version is even better than Aimer's…
Hue and I watched the first two Twilight movies. They're about as bad as they are entertaining. The seemingly endless staring contests between Bella and Edward, the psychopathic conversations in the woods, the gay guys running around half-naked in the forest. I wish there were a version of this series where it turns out that the whole fantasy stuff with vampires, werewolves, and magic is just the…
I dreamed that I was moving to a village, in the middle of summer. The people there were very nice and helped me settle into my new home. As I explored the surroundings, the nearby fields, forests, and mountains seemed to me like secret places waiting to be discovered. In some caves I suspected there were treasures. The field paths formed a clear pattern around the houses. I was told that the…
We celebrated Jessi's birthday in the park at the Rotes Tor. Pretty much all our special occasions get marked there. I met Thao at the train stop in front of our student dorm. We then took the tram together to the Rewe at Königsplatz to grab some snacks and drinks. The city center was buzzing with the crowds from the Augsburger Sommernächte happening at the same time. In the park we ate, drank,…
Websites about life that I like: Be Wrong, Bix Frankonis, Brian Koberlein, Conception of Concepts, Coda, Cory Doctorow, Craig Mod, Culture: An Owner’s Manual, From Jason, Go With the Flow, How to Japanese, Jose M. Gilgado, Kai-You, Keenan, LessWrong, Longest Voyage, Lux Magazine, Matt Alt, Manuel Moreale, Monocle, New Scientist, One From Nippon, Open Culture, Pink Tentacle, Pluralistic, Popular…
“Chiaki’s dead,” a quiet voice comes from the other side of the table. Ichika’s eyes search for sympathy, but Kana doesn’t understand a word. “Chiaki… which Chiaki?” “Chiaki Sano?” Ichika replies. “We were in the same class.” “The curly-haired one?” Ichika nods. “What happened?” “I don’t know. She didn’t leave a note.” “She killed herself?” “Yes. With a door handle, at her parents’ house. She used…
Video games are the only art form that can distract my self-diagnosed ADHD brain to such an extent that I don’t constantly slip into self-destructive thoughts or reach for my phone to let pseudo-social media wash over me.
Philipp has probably long since forgotten why his evenings consist of sitting alone in his small apartment somewhere in Tokyo, enjoying a modest bento box with a cold canned beer, staring out the window and watching people on the other side whose lives have taken different directions.
The questions that occupy me most when designing this website are: Who am I? What do I want? And what’s the point of any of this? The answers to these self-centered existential crises are not easy to find, because they shift depending on my mood and emotional state, and reveal themselves as traps whenever I finally manage to corner them and practically beg for mercy—and the enlightenment that…
I’ve decided to use Japan as the thematic foundation for my upcoming bachelor’s thesis in design. How exactly I want to approach this is still somewhat uncertain. At first, I intended to shoot a documentary about the colorful underground cultures in the Land of the Rising Sun. Cultures permeated by depression, anxiety about the future, and a kind of resentment toward society by their followers.
My time here in Kumamoto is now coming to an end. For a full year I have been an exchange student at the Faculty of Design of Japan’s Sojo University, exploring new ideas in both artistic and technical fields.
For exactly one year now I have been living in Japan. I have a Japanese phone number, a Japanese bank account, a Japanese social security number. As a student at the art faculty of a Japanese university, I have met many local creatives as well as wonderful people from all over the world who, like me, are trying to find their place in this demanding society.
On a warm summer evening, when the cicadas were diligently chirping away and the moon was slowly pushing itself onto the stage of the sky, a friend and I were on our way home from an exhibition when, not far off, we first heard music and shortly after cheerful laughter. Because we were curious and still had a bit of energy left, we decided to see what was going on there.
We arrived at the foot of Mount Tatsuda, the site of the Hosokawa family temple, Taishoji. Today the grounds belong to Tatsuda Nature Park, green, wide, and quiet.
Sometimes I wished I could muster the courage to leave everything behind, lock myself away forever in an apartment, and devote the rest of my life to a single online role-playing game.
Japan is a country full of treats. Those who want to fill a hungry stomach efficiently and cheaply can find sushi, tempura, and ramen on every corner, in different price ranges, in hidden restaurants or crowded supermarkets. But Japan would not be Japan if it hadn’t absorbed other culinary cultures and made them its own.
My journey begins in the Northshire Valley, enclosed by high mountains, somewhere in the thickly wooded Elwynn Forest. Before me stands not only the abbey of the local brotherhood but also an adventure that will take me into frozen deserts, bubbling volcanoes, and creepy ghost towns.
Summer here in Japan is slowly drawing to a close, though no one has informed the sun. It remains so hot and muggy that every step outdoors becomes a sweaty ordeal, at least when I dare to leave the house in broad daylight.
The other night over dinner, a friend asked why I love lesser-known films so much. Her favorites are American action blockbusters like “Die Hard”, “The Transporter”, and the high-octane “The Fast and the Furious” series with Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, and Michelle Rodriguez, while my patchy watchlist includes titles like “Nightcrawler”, “Melancholia”, and “My Small Land”.
Staggering from the cave on my last reserves, I let my eyes adjust to the harsh sunlight as a vast, mountain-studded snowscape unfurls before me. In towns clasped by timber and stone, merchants, thieves, and kings ply their trades. Dragons, werewolves, and vampires wake. Bright hoards and darker magics hide from the gaze of a budding civil war.
Although my chest houses the heart of a digital minimalist and light-footed traveler who thinks in bits and bytes and has gradually moved the baggage of his not-so-young life into the cloud, I have nonetheless kept a soft spot for printed media.
The weather over the past few months here in Kumamoto seems to recognize only two possible settings. Either it strives to mimic the lava-laced dungeons of hell and cook us alive, or it bombards us so mercilessly with rain, gales, and typhoons that building an ark seems the logical step for ferrying ourselves, and a few stray animals, to safety.
There are certain Japanese subcultures to which, to date, I’ve never really found an entry point. Among them are animated VTubers, masked superheroes à la Kamen Rider, and kaiju—giant monsters that, at regular intervals, stomp Tokyo flat. Well-known examples include Rodan, Mothra, King Ghidorah, Gamera, and of course the universally beloved Godzilla, brought to life by Ishiro Honda.
Summer in Japan is barbecue season. Partly that’s because it is, let’s say, bold to leave raw fish outdoors for longer than three seconds in these godless, blistering temperatures, let alone try to serve it to anyone.
Sometimes I refuse to consume media that has become too popular. Whether films, shows, or video games, once the hype train really gathers speed and it feels as if the entire planet is trying to convince me that I have to watch, listen to, or simply experience this thing because it’s the finest achievement humanity has produced in its more than 300,000-year history, I react almost reflexively with…
The Japanese language is a mountain that can be climbed only through perseverance, diligence, and the support of people who have already mastered it. Step by step, piece by piece, and word by word, I haul myself from one ledge to the next.
From early youth, my life was divided into chapters named for the women I happened to love at the time. Whether in Berlin, in Tokyo, or wherever I drifted, and whether anything became a relationship, whether intimacy happened or not, it was always too easy for me to become so intent on one woman that she defined an entire era. From this came obsessions that at times stretched across years, fed by…
Good stories put a quiet spell on me. Whether they arrive as books, films, or video games, what lingers afterward, often for far longer than I expect, isn’t the glossy, polished shell so many media try to sell these days, but the people inside and the moments that temper them into something tougher and wiser.
I never thought of myself as particularly attached to home, yet staying away too long causes a small ache that points, stubbornly, toward Germany. Sometimes it’s nothing more than the sound of the language, its clipped edges and sudden softnesses, absent from the air around me. At other moments a single habit or custom goes missing, and the day stumbles.
It’s no secret that, deep in my heart, I’m a nerd. I love wacky video games, quietly vibe to anime soundtracks, and enjoy stories in which foolish villagers become true heroes. Pen-and-paper adventures draw me in, and I gladly take part. Among mixed groups of barbarians, mages, and warlocks, I fight monsters, find great treasure, and rescue fair maidens.
Everyone seems to hold a different idea of minimalism. For me it means freedom. Freedom from objects that weigh on me, distract me, or hold me back. Consciously and unconsciously I try to remove, or at least shrink, anything that blocks spontaneity or agency.
Since my earliest days I have loved Japanese role‑playing games. No other genre draws me so deep into hidden worlds, deliberate stories, and mentally unstable characters. “Dragon Quest”, “Secret of Mana”, “Chrono Trigger”—whenever little boys rise to become god-slayers, I remain before the glowing screen for hundreds of hours, tracing each dialogue box while the world outside steadily burns to the…
I have lived in Japan for almost a year now. The steady scrutiny that accompanies the life of a so‑called gaijin outside the big cities no longer unsettles me.
I was living on FamilyMart rice balls and low blood sugar dreams. Tokyo nights too hot to sleep and too cold to stay awake—it’s always 3:47 a.m. when you walk into a konbini. The neon light like a kiss from a dying god. The buzz of the fridges like the sigh of someone who’s given up.
I’m collecting places like bruises, and Kumamoto is teaching me how to hold them. I want to swallow this city whole—its bars, its noodle shops, the grease-stained counters where old men nurse their drinks like they’re the last thing keeping them tethered. I want every corner that smells like soy and sweat, the kind of sweat that comes from standing over boiling broth all day.
Who gives a shit what Hollywood’s golden boys are sweating over in their hot rooms with their endless rewrites and plastic champagne. Because at the beginning of this millennium something happened. Something too soft to scream and too sharp to forget.
I participated in an art contest. Nothing serious, but it swallowed me whole. The theme was “Yokai”. Japanese spirits, monsters, the beautiful weirdness that lives between shadows and dreams.
I was drifting, low blood sugar, the air like soup. I hadn’t eaten all day, or maybe I had—I don’t remember anymore. Walking through this supermarket in Japan, one of those blindingly clean ones with neon light and weird elevator music playing overhead, and it was so cold. So cold. Fish eyes staring at me from slabs of ice.
I watched “Akira” and it never left. That’s the thing nobody tells you about movies like this—they don’t just exist in those two hours in the dark. They become part of how you see everything after.
Sometimes I’m not sure whether the world I currently find myself in is real. Then I strain to search for glitches that the simulation around me may have overlooked—only to eventually give up in frustration and realize, disappointed, that I’m not permitted to catch even the slightest glimpse behind the curtain.
I was determined to squeeze every last ounce of experience out of Kumamoto before time did what it always does—slip away like it owned the place. When my friend mentioned a classical concert, I said yes before my brain caught up to my mouth. Something about that city made me say yes to everything, like I was collecting moments like they were currency I’d need later.
Kumamoto wasn’t mine when I got here. It was just gray concrete and train stations and the specific kind of noise that makes you feel invisible. But then something shifted—maybe it was just time, or maybe the city decided I was worth knowing. Suddenly there were colors everywhere. Temple eaves catching the last light. Vending machines glowing at three in the morning. The kind of small details that…
Being in Japan feels like existing inside a dream that keeps restarting. There’s neon bleeding into everything, this dazed quality to how people move through the world, and I’m just wandering through it all not quite sure if I’m understanding anything correctly. Tokyo’s electric streets, Osaka’s weird late-night energy, Kyoto’s temples that feel less like buildings and more like something…
I wasn’t expecting Kumamoto Castle to hit me the way it did. I mean, I knew it would be impressive—it’s famous for a reason—but standing at its base, looking up at these walls that had literally been destroyed and rebuilt, something shifted. The earthquake happened. The ground actually split open. The walls crumbled. And then people just... put it back together. Stone by stone. It’s wild to think…
Tokyo swallows me in its heat. The asphalt quivers, glass panes tremble. Neon lights flicker in my eyes like broken memories. I drift with the crowd, let myself be pushed, my body feverish, my head full of everything and nothing. Then I’m inside—inside the world of teamLab. Borderless—no walls, no doors, no boundaries. Only light.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Ikebukuro after dark, and honestly, I think you have to go there at night to really get what Tokyo is doing. It’s intense in a way that feels almost necessary—like the whole city needs somewhere to let loose and just breathe differently. Everyone’s there after work with their colleagues or alone or with people they probably shouldn’t be with, and there’s this palpable…