◉ 033 | I've Never Been to Japan

I love Japan.

Though,

I’ve never been to Japan.

I also love maps.

In 2021,

COVID times,

Melbourne was

in and out

of lockdowns.

When we were

in lockdown,

it was a five-kilometre radius.

Daily walks

on a leash.

When we were

out of lockdown,

the borders stayed closed.

No international travel.

Even if I’d wanted

to fly to Japan,

I couldn’t.

The walls closing in

did something to my brain.

I got this idea

to find Japan

in Australia.

So I started a photography project

and named it

For God’s Saké.

I took places in Japan

that interested me—

mountains,

shrines,

cities—

looked up their GPS coordinates.

I kept all the degrees

and only changed

one letter:

N to S.

North

became South.

35°N

turned into

35°S.

About

4,000 kilometres from Japan

down to the equator,

and another 4,000

down to here.

Those places

fell right into

Australia.

Mostly

South Australia.

It was like opening an attic door

in the ceiling,

with the hinges fixed at the equator,

and watching Japan

drop through onto our side

of the world.

I’ve been trying

to connect the dots.

In April 2022, I packed my gear

and left for South Australia.

For a week I was on the road,

2,000 km of driving,

trying to make sense of my idea.

Mount Fuji:

35.36072° N, 138.72744° E.

Replacing N

with S:

35.36072° S, 138.72744° E.

I pasted it

back into Maps.

It landed on a road

in South Australia

overlooking a hill.

Mount Observation.

Nothing like

Mount Fuji.

How the fuck am I going to find

Mount Fuji in South Australia?

This was the best I could find:

Was this project

doomed to failure?

In November 2022,

I packed again

and drove back to South Australia.

Another 2,000 km drive.

On 21 November I ended up

in Adelaide.

I couldn’t connect

anything there

with my project.

Of course,

most of Adelaide falls

in the Pacific Ocean

in Japanese waters.

I wandered around

aimlessly.

I noticed an exhibition

at the Migration Museum.

I went in.

Inside,

there was an exhibition

called Pilgrim,

Junrei in Japanese.

Twin sisters,

Erica and Lisa,

moved from Japan

to Australia.

Did the collaboration.

Exhibited it.

They were together in every photo

as the main protagonists,

always framed by the same

bright red torii gate

they carried across South Australia—

a piece of Japan

standing on this side

of the world.

I’d been flipping Japan

over the equator on a map.

They carried their lives

across the same line.

Then I noticed

a sign with a tribute

to Erica Hoy.

She had died

in a freak car accident

twenty days earlier.

I was standing there,

looking at twins

on the wall,

knowing that now

there was only one.

I was…

WTF?

Earlier that day,

I had visited Himeji Garden—

a place created to celebrate

the twin cities:

Adelaide,

in South Australia,

and Himeji,

in Japan.

Everything was

twin

that day.

From time to time

I think about the Hoy sisters.

Is their story maybe

an integral part

of my For God’s Saké project?

A few days ago,

I was sitting in a café

with Mark.

He mentioned this project,

and I said

I’d abandoned it.

He said:

“You mean,

you put it on the side?”

I nodded.

It seems his question

woke something up in me.

This morning,

I googled

“Erica Hoy”

again.