Off to Nagoya

　Today I went to Nagoya. 　First, I visited Kusamura BOOKS Shin-Moriyama (probably in Moriyama Ward). My last visit was about two months ago, and this was my second time. Before speaking to the staff I walked around the store, and the floors were so well stocked that I wondered if it had always been this big. They had not only books but also goods, and to my surprise there was a Starbucks I hadn't noticed last time, with many people studying or working there. 　I had a hard time finding the ZINE corner, and when I did it was in a completely different place from what I remembered, but the atmosphere around it was noticeably different. The individuality that should be inside the books seemed to seep out in front of the shelves. (Maybe that was just me.) For literary or business books—the kind with barcodes—I feel like I know where they belong, but that doesn't apply to ZINEs. They all give off a "Huh? Why am I here again?" kind of message. That's probably the source of the feeling in front of the shelves. 　I think that lack of convention is ZINEs' greatest charm. 　Thinking that, I handed the staff a Zindies pamphlet and a refeel.day card and left. 　Next I went to NAgoya BOOK CENTER. I had a long chat with Zindies member Fujisaka and we planned our next moves. What should we do in an age when AI writes programs? Written down it sounds like a very lofty topic, but we weren't trying to be lofty—we kept coming back to what to do tomorrow, the day after, and over the next six months. Data will certainly be key, but blindly heading in that direction has no point. We need to make it a project that has social meaning. That's roughly what we talked about. 　After the conversation I found and bought a few ZINEs that caught my eye. Encounters like that are always enjoyable.