Yuki no Senba

At 7:58 AM on December 18, 2023, I boarded flight JL585 from Tokyo to Hakodate. Sleepless, having spent the night with The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band" playing on loop.

This was my first time heading north during the winter, and I wasn’t carrying much luggage. My backpack only included a Ricoh GR3, a Mamiya 72 camera, some rolls of film, and a few changes of clothes.

After stowing my belongings with the assistance of a flight attendant, I leaned against the plane's window. The cramped seat and my lack of rest stirred feelings of nausea and irritability within me."How nice it would be to have a smoke right now," I muttered to myself while chewing on some flavorless gum that I had casually picked up from an airport shop.The early flight was not very full, the repeated safety announcements echoed emptily through the cabin. Gradually, a wave of drowsiness overcame me. As the engine roared in the background, I drifted off to sleep

Hokkaido, a place of dreams from my youth. Though I have long forgotten when it first lodged itself in my mind, perhaps I came across it in a book I read long ago. Before this journey began, the broken promises of a friend and the departure of a past lover—coupled with relentless insomnia—had left me physically and emotionally drained. I was tired of the mutual suspicions between people; I yearned to get away from it all, to tread alone towards the end of the hard-boild wonderland, and to shout it all out. The scenes I've captured are filled with a sense of emptiness and solitude, like a formless fog, yet they are always captured.