My parents moved near Gakugei-daigaku Station when I was in junior high and high school, around the ages of 15 or 16. An apartment where I lived during my university was also in the same area. Though I once tried living alone during university to gain independence, my mountaineering and travel gear wouldn’t fit in my small apartment, I kept them at my parents’ house. To ensure I could set off on trips at a moment’s notice, I chose to live in an apartment not far from my parents’ house.

My parents’ house is equally distant from three stations with university-related names: Gakugei-daigaku Station, Komazawa-daigaku Station, and Toritsu-daigaku Station. Interestingly, while Komazawa University actually exists near its namesake station, Tokyo Gakugei University and Tokyo Metropolitan University have long since moved elsewhere, leaving only their names behind on the station signs. I frequently use Komazawa-daigaku Station and occasionally Toritsu-daigaku Station. However, I have recently found Gakugei-daigaku Station particularly convenient due to the increasing number of LUUP electric scooter and bike-sharing service ports.

I’m the complete opposite of someone who can’t sleep unless they have their own pillow. When it comes to things like that, I’m incredibly indifferent—if I have shelter from the rain and a place to lie down, I can feel at home anywhere. Naomi Uemura and Michio Hoshino rarely talked about their family homes or hometowns. Maybe they simply had no reason to write about them, but I imagine they, like me, didn’t feel particularly attached to such things.

The shopping area around Gakugei-daigaku Station is always lively and fun, with shops frequently coming and going. While some areas suffer from streets lined with shuttered storefronts, Gakugei Daigaku remains bustling—which is good. Personally, I feel more comfortable in places like Renoir traditional coffee rooms or chain family restaurants rather than trendy coffee shops that cater to people with a high sensitivity. I can blend into the background, surrounded by all kinds of customers, and focus on emails or writing without distraction.

There used to be a café called “dan STATION” right by Gakugei-daigaku Station, which I frequented. It had a strangely dim interior that felt like an old train platform, with plastic boards displaying hand-written menus in marker, offering coffee and banana juice—just your typical neighborhood café. I liked such slightly run-down atmosphere. I also used to visit “Mimi” Chinese restaurant, and “Katsuyoshi” tonkatsu (pork cutlet) place run by a chef trained at a well-known restaurant in Meguro.

Other places I often visited in the area of Gakugei Daigaku included Himonya Park where I’d go for walks, and Meguro Post Office where I’d mail letters and packages. When I first got into photography, I would walk a bit further to Musashi Koyama to check out “Sanpou Camera” secondhand camera shop (now relocated).

More recently, I’ve taken up running in Komazawa Park. A few years ago, a gym opened on the first floor of a karate dojo hall near the Nozawa intersection. I often use the gym because I can train in a low-oxygen environment there. The facility simulates an altitude of about 3,000 meters, allowing for high-altitude training. Doing Tabata-style workout (a form of high-intensity interval training) there before heading to the Himalayas makes it significantly easier to acclimate to high altitudes.

During the two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, I spent my time photographing brown rats of Shibuya, but I also photographed around my neighborhood and my house, and even inside my house. Unlike Shibuya, though, the area around my house didn’t produce particularly interesting photos, so I never published them. Still, I did manage to capture a lightning strike from my rooftop by chance—something I had never photographed before. It was during that time that I also put together my photobook TOKYO: The City Where I Was Born (Errand Press, 2020). The photos of the Shibuya rats were later compiled into STREETS ARE MINE (Daiwa Shobo, 2022).

Aside from that, I also experimented with a camera obscura in my room for fun. I blacked out the entire room and made a small, one-centimeter hole in the window to let in light. This turned the whole room into a camera, where the outside scenery was projected onto the interior through the incoming light. I photographed those projections and carried out various experiments. It’s something I never would have done if not for the pandemic, so in a way, those two years weren’t wasted.

In my late 30s, my parents had a black-and-white border collie. His name was Leo, and I think he lived for about 17 or 18 years. Being a large dog, he had a strong presence, and after he passed away, my parents went through what you might call “pet loss grief.” After coming home from work, I would often run with him to the dog park in Komazawa Park. Sometimes, I’d ride my skateboard, letting him pull me through the neighborhood like a sled dog. Even now, thinking about Leo makes me feel a little wistful.

I love skateboarding and own about five boards. I first got into it while studying abroad at the University of Hawaiʻi where I took language courses. That’s when I bought my first long skateboard. Since then, I’ve collected boards of various sizes from small to longboards. At the university, some students would commute from their dormitories to campus by skateboard, so I copied them. I also used mine to get around my neighborhood. One time, though, I fell and broke my wrist, and after that, I didn’t ride as often. Still, I occasionally take it out for fun. I learned both skateboarding and mountaineering on my own, so maybe that’s just my nature.