2007/05/29＊Takuro

「Coin Gondry」

It looks like the rainy season is upon us. This is Takuro.

Passing time in a coin laundry is one of my hobbies. I went to one yesterday, too. Of course, I had but one thing to do there: wash and dry off my laundry. This is just a guess on my part, but I think laundromat lovers are more common than you might think.

The buildings seem even more sterile than convenience stores do when, in fact, there’s actually a sense of real daily life to be felt there along with all kinds of people coming in each day and passing one another by…… it’s really kind of a strange place to be.

For me, the most pleasurable is the time after the washing has ended and I’ve switched to the dryer. I like when I don’t have to do anything, see. I’ve dedicated that time entirely to reading. Even if it’s books I’ve read several times before, if my soundtrack is provided by the motors of the washing machines and dryers, I can be happily flipping through the pages and still find new expressions within them. There’s also piles of magazines there, but I try to keep myself distanced from them as I just can’t stop reading manga once I start. (I think they have lots of Morning there. All of us in 9mm like both manga and books.)

Nowadays I can go in enjoy myself even without bringing anything to keep me entertained. If you can’t quite sort out your thoughts, just thinking about what’s troubling you there, surrounded by the sound of the washing machines and dryers, it has this strange effect of calming down your mind and letting you think efficiently. I come up with lyrics there, too, but usually the dryer stops just as I’m about to get to the good part.

Yesterday, interrupting me there in mid-thought was this grandma who came in and looked around restlessly.
“I’m good, I’m good, don’t worry about it!” she said as I turned to help over.
“Oh, well I’m fine, oh I see, I’m glad.”
Luckily, I only uttered this unfortunate response inside my head so I avoided any problems.

I’ve no idea what exactly I was glad about, but at that time my thoughts were something along the lines of “So Michael Gondry came up with a new movie, huh? I want to see it. Oh, and Pirates of the Caribbean was released too, huh? Ah, they’re showing Spiderman too, Venom’s looking pretty good huh, Venom… Hmm? There’s a Pedro Almodóvar as well? Ah man.” Basically, I was thinking about movies I want to go and see. However, even though I already got this excited about it, I’ll unfortunately be off on a tour starting tomorrow.

“What the hell! I won’t be able to see any movies if that’s the case, I have a show like every day!! This sucks!!“, I was saying to myself. “Ahh! Need to put my thoughts in order, I have to go visit the laundry…“

・・・・・・going out・・・→・・・→・・・returning home・・・・・・・

Now then, “The World tour” is finally starting!! I’m really looking forward to seeing how it goes. 9mm-movie.com¹ is online (←I think this is really funny) and the tour goods are also wonderful. After this I’ll start packing. Everyone, please listen to our CD in preparation.

Right then, we’ll meet at the live house. This was Takuro.

※The picture² is from an izakaya in Hanamatsu where we’ll play our tour final.

¹ No longer online, was probably some PR for the tour?
² Translation of the signboard: “Hey, party organizers! Try our expensive and shitty party at least once!“