I feel more at home with something that has lost a few drops of color than something that is bright and shiny.
It’s not that anything is better if it is dull, but, for example, I think a white T-shirt that has been washed several times, with a little color transfer from other laundry is nicer than one that is brand new.
When I went to a stationery shop in Ginza, I found a fountain pen ink made in Taiwan.
I like and use it because it has an exquisite dusky color.
On the bottle, it says ‘蚵’. I looked up the Chinese character, which I didn’t know, and found that the ink represented the color of oysters.
At first, I was just attracted by the name and bought it home without checking the color.
Its color turned out to be an exquisitely dark, deep grey, almost black, mixed with a bluish alga green.
I also like the fact that it is not the color of the actual oysters, and I use that ink exclusively these days.
I find it beautiful that the flesh of the oysters that we eat is also dusky and not too white.
I have heard that oysters taste like the sea.
When I see the way oysters are eaten, prizing open the tightly closed shell with a knife through a small opening, holding the rough, hard shell and sucking the smooth flesh, I feel it is very cruel.
People suck them with ecstatic expressions on their faces while throwing the shells around randomly.
I used to sip oysters casually as a child, but as I grew up and learned about the risk of food poisoning from oysters, I became too afraid to eat them.
Without knowing it, I used to find it pleasant to have them slide down my throat, but I can’t remember what they taste like any more.
In one of Anton Chekhov’s short stories, a boy who has never eaten an oyster before devours the whole oyster shell, saying it is so delicious.
He chomps down so hard that his teeth are almost worn down and his mouth nearly bleeds, while the adults, who know that it is not the proper way to eat oysters, laugh at him.
Looking at the oyster shells on the seafront stalls where oysters are grilled, I also think they resemble tarnished silverware.
I always have a small cylinder in which I keep my regular medicine.
At first it was a light gray color, but over the years it has gradually taken on a purplish tarnish on the silver.
It is a pattern that has developed as I open and close the cylinder over and over again, and looks like an image of a gas giant I saw in an astronomy book once upon a time.
