Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Grant McGaheran

@grantmcgaheran.bsky.social

340 followers 260 following 1.1K posts

From Sheffield, in Tokyo since 2000. Books, walks, modernism, records, cats.

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 1d

Beguiling pubtones of southern Ichikawa

An izakaya with striped awning, three Shōwa era bar stools lined up outside and a red cagoule hanging to dry

5 35

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 5h

This rust blue hulk already looked ancient when I first spotted it over 20 years ago. Now convinced it will outlive me. Note the tape saltires on the doors, de rigeur during the typhoon-wracked autumn of 2019.

Abandoned rusted blue corrugated metal building with steps and protruding upper floor. Hirai, Tokyo

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 5h

Robot proud of Doraemon chin tattoo

Electricity meter box with the face of a Doraemon painted on it

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 11h

Ach, don't stare so.

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 14h

Murnane has precisely the voice I imagined! I especially liked At the Drapers on this.

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 1d

'I made no special mention of Romania. I was no longer anxious to interpret its strangeness for myself or for others. I believed that I, like everyone about me, was an exile from a stranger place still - the country that allowed us all to think ourselves exiles from a stranger place still.'

1 1 6

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 1d

Beguiling pubtones of southern Ichikawa

5 35

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 1d

ごはんや

Child's or childlike drawing of two people, one big, one small with tired staring eyes in a shop window. The big one holds a doll, the small one has the kanji "gen" or "moto" on its chest. Both has seen far, far too much.

1 7

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 1d

Let's have some Super Nikka at Twinkle.

A snack called Twinkle with potted plants outside
Hirai, Tokyo

1 16

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 1d

'Behind the town hall there is a wooded parkland which, towards the end of November, begins to draw a thin blue cloud right into itself; and as a rule the park floats in this haze until mid-February.'

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 2d

Hair salon half-ruined

An old-fashioned old ladies' hair salon being demolished on a rainy day in Hirai, Tokyo

2 24

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 2d

海文堂 / COIN LAUNDRY XANADU

Very old building with Kaibundō in kanji on the front. The window of a café upstairs is open. The ground floor has a new, blue sign announcing Coin Laundry Xanadu.

1 1 17

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 3d

Jimbochoices: Sparks

1 6

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 3d

Healing Friday visit to Jimbōchō.

Street bookshelves of Yaguchi Shoten in Kanda-Jinbōchō, Tokyo

1 13

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 5d

'The mysterious sadness he felt on waking he had until now blamed on remoteness from God. Now he was beginning to suppose that people really must be made in His image, for their true face was just as concealed and their true whereabouts as obscure.'

Mavis Gallant
The Collected Stories
Everyman's Library

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 5d

She looks lovely in orange, bless her.

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 5d

Enjoyed the clouds this evening.

2 10

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 8d

Give in to ancient noise

Shutter with colourful robot face and A4 sheet with handwritten dates

1 9

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 9d

Microclimate

Potted plants arranged in front of a house in damp Tokyo

1 1 23

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 9d

Always feels good to see the season's first mackerel
sky🍁

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 9d

The movie sounds like a treat. I have vague memories of it being on TV in the 90s but I was simply too daft to appreciate it at the time.
I approve of that Penguin Modern Classics cover, it is mint and skill (as me in the 90s would've put it).

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 9d

A Different Corner

Old-fashioned dry cleaner's on a corner with a vending machine and potted plants
Hirai, Tokyo

2 18

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 9d

'It's because deep down I want to love the thing I would love - and not what is. It's because I'm still not myself, and so the punishment is loving a world that's not itself.'

Clarice Lispector
Complete Stories
translated by Katrina Dodson
New Directions
quote from the story Perdoando Deus (Forgiving God)

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 10d

Enjoyed the clouds this afternoon.

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 10d

Enjoyed the clouds this morning.

Sharp corner of a Funabashi building and the morning mackerel sky

1 2 18

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 10d

Definitely a happy accident, especially if they're different editions. What a wonderful novel that is, and so rereadable. I think the signs of autumn are putting me in a mood for Stella. That and wanting to briefly tune out the hideous historical moment we're living through.

1 2