journal features

ghosts of Shinagawa

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2010.09.07

On my way to Japanese class today, I made some long-exposure shots of the crowd passing in Shinagawa station.

I've done it before, but usually on a planned basis, and usually with a tripod. This was just a spur of the moment thing.

At Japanese class, my teacher told me what I needed to hear. That I wasn't going to make the JLPT test I had in mind, this December. She told me, "You've got three months. You need six."

rand()m quote

Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot