We return back to the hotel and my brother decides to play Initial D at the arcade: a car-racing arcade console based on the manga. When we were younger, he used to watch it for hours into the night and I would watch by his side if there was nobody to talk to on MSN; sometimes he would even wake me up in some mornings to watch the movies.

We walk around and find old childhood favourites such as Mario Kart, Pokemon and Dance Dance Revolution; and we watch people spend hours on games which they have mastered perfectly: it’s unbelievable how quick people’s reflexes and muscle memory is with music. Kingsley attempts many times to win oversized Minions and other plushies with no luck.

We both realise how much of our childhood was affected by Japanese gaming culture: I used to spend all of the hours of my day playing games such as MapleStory and Gunbound. We both grew up playing Pokemon and we used to race each other on Mario Kart late into the hours of the morning. Seeing four levels of our childhood filled the both of us with such joy and still remains at the core of our brotherly bond.

Typhoon Nangka might have stripped me temporarily of my emotional stability those few days but the arcades of Osaka were able to remind me that I need to enjoy the simpler pleasures, especially during the most complicated of times.

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So much has happened, and all of it has been too important

A trip to Far East Gippsland

September 14th, 2021

December 30th, 2020

Between lockdowns

Six months on

September 14^th, 2021

December 30^th, 2020