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Grant McGaheran

@grantmcgaheran.bsky.social

340 followers 250 following 1.1K posts

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

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Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 14d

Portal of Evil

Orange glass door, hanging ajar, of a yakiniku restaurant that has been closed for at least fifteen years

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Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 11h

Hair salon half-ruined

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

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Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 20h

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.

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Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 1d

Jimbochoices: Sparks

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Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 1d

Healing Friday visit to Jimbōchō.

Street bookshelves of Yaguchi Shoten in Kanda-Jinbōchō, Tokyo

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Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 3d

'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 · 3d

She looks lovely in orange, bless her.

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 3d

Enjoyed the clouds this evening.

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Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 6d

Give in to ancient noise

Shutter with colourful robot face and A4 sheet with handwritten dates

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Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 7d

Microclimate

Potted plants arranged in front of a house in damp Tokyo

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Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 7d

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

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 7d

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 · 7d

A Different Corner

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

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Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 8d

'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 · 8d

Enjoyed the clouds this afternoon.

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 8d

Enjoyed the clouds this morning.

Sharp corner of a Funabashi building and the morning mackerel sky

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Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 8d

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.

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Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 10d

'The last light was fading from the window, where the curtains remained undrawn. Ella's face suggested that of some ageless goblin - on its best behaviour, certainly, but also quite determined to have its own way about some secret desire of its own.'

A Pink Front Door
Stella Gibbons
Dean Street Press

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Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 11d

'Our delight in the sunshine on the deep bladed grass today, might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years, which still live in us and transform our perception into love.'

George Eliot
The Mill on the Floss
Penguin Classics

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Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 12d

I hope you have all prepared your Michaelmas bannock and stubble-goose.

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 14d

Hey guys look it's Kyou-chan.

Sign for an izakaya called Kyou-chan with the grinning head of presumably Kyou-chan
Koiwa, Tokyo

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 14d

Portal of Evil

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Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 14d

Cheers mate.

The driver looks out of the door of a Keisei Line train at Keisei Funabashi station.

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 14d

'What followed was the story of his life, less in detail than in atmosphere, for the course of events was fog-bound.'

Cocktail Bar
Norah Hoult
New Island Books

'It's nice here, he said when he'd lit her cigarette, and again she agreed.
What followed was the story of his life, less in detail than in atmosphere, for the course of events was fog-bound. Women making themselves interesting to a passing stranger are generally impelled into a narrative of events, of operations, of their children or grandchildren, or even yet of those high spots of their lives when the bombs fell in their neighbourhood. No such tide bore him on or washed him backwards, for he was impaled in the present. Quite soon he said:
'You are the first person I've spoken to to-day'

Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 18d

'Lord Emsworth was 'registering' interest - interest which, he perceived from the first instant, would have to be completely simulated; for instinct told him, as Mr Peters began to talk, that he was about to be bored as he had seldom been bored in his life.'

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Grant McGaheran @grantmcgaheran.bsky.social · 23d

The Information

White piece of paper on black shutters with 'mokuyou teikyuu' (closed Thursdays) written on it in black marker pen and a simple doodle of what may well be the face of a pigeon