One of the more tragic things I did during lockdown involved loading up Jet Set Radio Future for the first time in an age and playing through it with my phone by my side. Partly I just wanted to feel the game under my feet again – that hectic, freewheeling pleasure of city space and cold night air. Partly, though, I wanted to take phone pictures of Tokyo-To as a tourist would. I ended up taking screenshots of the actual screen. Snap!
Okay: so while I was doing this, it felt super stupid. If I already sound like an idiot here – and I’m pretty sure I do m8s! – I definitely felt like one. It was not at all like being a tourist in a city. It was instead very much like being a strange man sat in his living room, pointing his phone at a TV screen.
And yet! Here’s the thing. It sort of worked. It just didn’t work at that moment. I played Jet Set Radio Future with my cameraphone to feel like I was traveling somewhere, to feel like I was escaping from my living room, my house, my street, inevitably escaping from myself a bit. And now, months later, when I look back at the pictures on my phone – a blurry streetcorner here, Dogenzaka Hill tearing slightly as a lightbulb in the background renders the screen a pearly blue – the effect finally works. I look back at the pictures and think of the place I have been to, and the different times I have been there. What it meant to me. How it felt.
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