Ambience

Sounds are important to me, and they're so different here. It's a solitary feeling to be bombarded by what is just ambient for everyone else. But it's thrilling to have contrast for the first time ever. Changes in ambient noise, for me crucial markers of space, are suddenly redefined: crossing the street sounds different; so does taking a train; so does home. Montreal's ambience is sparser, slower, I think, and in all ways I speak it's language. But Nagoya's is jarring and pitchy: people (and the robots that replace them) all whistling towards you for the briefest moment of your undivided attention. It's fragile and jengas all too easily into white noise.

So here are some such sounds. I'm collecting them like Pokemon now. They're snippets but should do the trick: I usually just switch on my Voice Memo app when it feels right. This is a backlog of 4 or so, but i'll try to incorporate them more like i did last week with Osu Kannon. They're nothing special, (which I think is precisely the point).


Taking the Airport shuttle at San Fran (02-11)

Walking past a Pachinko parlour at night in a covered market (02-23)

A demontration and a train, taken from my back balcony. Incredibly loud. (02-24)

One stop on the squeaky local train (03-07)