No.30
A curated mix of thoughts, discoveries and fresh perspectives to kickstart your day.
At a volleyball all-star event in Kobe earlier this year, Japanese player Yuji Nishida accidentally struck a courtside judge with the ball. What happened next has been watched millions of times since.
Before she’d regained her composure, Nishida (all 186cm of him) was already flat on the court, sliding headfirst towards her, arms at his sides. Then came the bowing. Sustained, sincere, entirely unscripted.
In Japanese culture, the dogeza is the most profound form of apology — prostrating yourself so that your forehead touches the floor. A gesture so extreme it’s almost never seen in everyday life. Nishida didn’t just perform it. He slid into it at speed.
It’s a joyful thing to behold. But there’s something deeper in it too — what genuine accountability looks like when someone’s not performing for a camera, just doing what their instincts told them to do.
There is an art to wasting a morning properly. So says Tomás Aguillar — and we couldn’t agree more. Next time you have one to waste, here’s the field guide.
Maurizio Rampa is an Italian photographer who has spent years travelling the world with a project he calls Postcards from Nowhere — a deeply personal journal of the road, and everything it throws back at you. India, Japan, Morocco, Egypt, Georgia, the list goes on.
We’ve always preferred the place with plastic chairs and no name on the door, over the one that made the list. The kind of place where nobody’s trying to impress you, and somehow that’s exactly what it does. Rampa is that kind of traveller too.
We found ourselves drawn to his gas stations series — shot in Armenia. Little beacons of life in the middle of nowhere. Most people don’t pause long enough to notice their beauty. Rampa does.
Get lost in his photographs. Then look up.
The best discoveries come from friends, not algorithms. Forward or share if you think of someone who might enjoy this.
GOOD DAYS is published by HORACE