Game Show Nirvana and a Pack of Lucky Strikes

“cigarette stick on ashtray” by Ali Yahya on Unsplash

Slow late Sunday afternoon television in Japan; Sumo, golf, enka singers, all tied to food somehow; entertainment for the old and near dead. Soft tones, flat screens, and entreatingly optimistic voices pitching banality that mirrors an afterlife everyone over 70 in Japan longs for.

Grandfather’s seventh cigarette of the day burns slowly towards his yellowed and dead finger tips that rest quiet and still on the cool tatami.

no one dies like the
samurai once did when
bushido meant something

Game Show Nirvana and a Pack of Lucky Strikes was originally published in The Junction on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.