Driving south from Mendocino toward the Brewery Gulch Inn on Highway 1, I missed my turn and had to double back. Even though it wasn’t even 6:00 PM yet, it was impossibly dark—unlike a city, there were no streetlights or even a glimmer of light from nearby houses.

In that moment, I suddenly caught a fleeting sense of the atmosphere from my childhood.

I was born in Tokyo and grew up in its suburbs. Back then, even though it was a suburb of the capital, it was nothing like it is now; it was surrounded by rice paddies, fields, and woods. The houses were few and far between, tucked away on small patches of land.

Because of that, the sunsets back then felt more vivid than they do today—a very quiet, deeply evocative landscape.

I think it was that gentle light of the sunset, set against the pitch-black darkness, that stirred such a sense of nostalgia in me.