Part 2 – The Ennui of Lockdown

By late spring of 2020, we all picked up hobbies and projects to distract ourselves from the onslaught of disheartening news that rained down on us each and every day in the early days of the lockdown. My initial plan was to just make my prison cell/basement home office a wee bit nicer. Anything to add a bit of life to white mold-resistant walls and soul-crushing fluorescent tube lighting.

2020, Return of the Weeaboo. Sega Mega Drive games.

As the days ticked by, I often thought about the “before times”, when we took freedom of movement and world travel for granted. Trapsing through foreign lands buying all sorts of weird stuff that made us laugh or thought was real neat. Hats that look like a swirl of poop, candy that tasted like ramen, and of course video games. Those relics from my far weebier and younger days of worshipping at the altar of Japanese pop culture were packed away by serious “adult” me a few years earlier, now called out to me as much needed reminders of more cheerful times.

One of the first things I excavated were my old Japanese Sega Mega Drive video games from my numerous trips to Hong Kong in the early 1990’s.