CITY RAMBLER AL NINGEN’S “TOKYO FURUSATO”

IN A PANORAMIC STREAM OF VERSE, A SCOTTISH POET EXPLORES A PLACE ON THE MAP AND IN THE HEART

Al Ningen is the nom d’auteur of a Scottish musician, songwriter, teacher of English and cultural studies, and indefatigable explorer of Tokyo, a vast, dynamic metropolis filled with ancient spirits and ultramodern technology that has been his home for the past year. In fact, Ningen, who in the past taught English at schools in Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, and lived in London, too, where he pursued a career — and landed an unrealized record deal — as a pop-rock singer-songwriter, had spent time in Japan prior to moving to Tokyo last year, even as the coronavirus was still unfolding.

The famous intersection of several streets near Shibuya Station, Tokyo, at night, in a photo shot by brutjournal's editor in chief, Edward M. Gómez

Now working as an English teacher in the Japanese capital, Ningen is what is known in French as an enthusiastic flâneur, or someone who savors long, unplanned, meandering strolls through the metropolis and the unexpected discoveries such expeditions inevitably offer up.