(from the series Chasing Sakura)

Due to the back-and-forth nature of our trip, we had two days in Tokyo before we were to leave it. We’d be back in the weeks to come but we craved a taste. All those images fed through film and TV: the clamour of night-time arcades; dress-up karaoke booths; clusters of skyscrapers; neon lights pinging off cabs and rivers. How do you begin to absorb a city of Tokyo’s scale in mere hours?

From the safety of a window in Shibuya train station we watched the infamous scramble crossing below. All at once, the lights…

(From the series Chasing Sakura)

For someone who won’t even break a novel’s spine, I’ve always fostered a love of the out-of-place. As a child I was riveted by that hurricane uprooting Dorothy’s house and dropping it in the Land of Oz; transporting it from a world of black and white to one of so much colour it toppled over into gaudy. In my teen years, feeling like a total misfit among other teens who also felt like misfits, I became fascinated by Colonialism. …