For most of 2020 I was obsessed with a book, The Bells of Old Tokyo, by Anna Sherman. It’s a book about an awful lot of things, and I won’t do it the violence of trying to untangle any of that here. But one of the things it’s about is a coffee shop in Tokyo run by a man named Daibo.
Please read this book. I won’t spoil much. All I need to say here is that Daibo’s Coffee Shop is a place of calm and tradition, a place where time slows and reflection is encouraged. As Daibo makes his coffee he chooses a cup for you. The ground beans bloom. It takes time and it’s personal, and that’s the point.
Coffee shops! Coffee shops, libraries, the tucked-away corners of second-hand book stores and junk shops. This is what I have missed the most, I think, over the last two years. I never realised I loved these places – or rather, I never realised that I loved the same thing about all of them. Now I realise all too sweetly that what I miss, what I continue to miss, given this uncertain time we’re living through, is that quiet gift of cities and urban spaces: the pleasure of being by yourself but surrounded by other people. The pleasures of being together, alone.
Games, of course, are absolutely at this. It’s pretty much a key element of what they do. Just you and a bunch of people who don’t really exist, hanging out together in cyberspace. For 2020, my go-to for being together, alone, was Inkopolis Square, where one goes to see and be seen as much as think about maybe having a round of Splatoon. Inkopolis’ together/aloneness is particularly delicious because the people around you are real players, just with the human part sliced away. Digital shadows, poised and sauntering.