Lunch Box Letter #1: Japan to Upland, California; newsletter anti-strategy; mom's breakfast sandwich

Trying to pin down what a newsletter actually is, some updates and what I've been consuming

Upland, California, potentially. This image was taken during a difficult hike and I’m not sure which direction I was facing at this point.

Hello readers,

Welcome to my first or second attempt at a regular newsletter format. I’ve so far avoided it because my newspaper brain works in terms of 1,000 to 2,000 word articles. But I feel a new urgency to get my ideas out without waiting for them to cohere into a dense, discrete brick of info. So what if social media is killing legacy media, and AI is killing art/literacy and Substack posters are killing literary fiction, because I’ve got a plan: To hit the send button a lil more often.

What makes something a newsletter? The most common format I see is the writerly equivalent of a selfie - a few paragraphs, some links and some other details to offer a snapshot of your intellectual life. Others are more explicitly product and service-oriented, or essayistic and argumentative, like monetized long-form tweets or blogs. My current favorite is S(ubstack)-Bahn, powerfully detailed articles, with citations, about public transit all over the world.

And then there’s what I’ve been doing, which can’t really be called strategy: writing about whatever interests/inspires me the most at the moment, in whatever format suits the material best.

In case anyone is curious about how profitable that tact is, I should mention that these days I live with my parents in Upland, California, a suburb an hour east from downtown Los Angeles.

It’s so remote that the best way I can describe it in SoCal terms is that there’s actually a Sonic close by - not just disembodied ads that leave you with cravings impossible to satisfy.

I dreaded moving so far from my life and friends in LA. But it’s actually so mind-numbing that I’ve rounded the corner to being modestly intrigued. This part of the Inland Empire is full of new construction and first-time home buyers, lots of young families and Asian and Latino immigrants. And it’s a good of a look as any at what passes for the “American dream” in this part of California.

Everyone seems to live behind cinderblock walls in cramped tract developments with aspirational names. The fences are tall because people want privacy but no one has much to protect. The streets have names like Moonlight Meadows and Enchantment Valley but the views are all gray and beige concrete - most homes don’t have front lawns. There’s breathtaking nature in the San Gabriel Mountains a 20 minute drive north, but the main ecology in my immediate environs is flat, soon-to-be developed dirt.

I’ve never lived in a suburb of such gargantuan scale. Everything is so crisp and generic that it’s hard to tell the difference between architectural mockup and reality. I can almost make out the parcel lines if I squint.

I spent a few weeks paralyzed by culture shock. I rented most recently in Venice Beach and had spent the past month zooming around Japan on the shinkansen. My diet suffered most. Upland is a virtual fast casual salad desert compared to the Los Angeles Westside.

In Venice I walked to the beach, the farmers market, the library and the book shop. Now the only thing I can reach on foot is a gas station. But I count at least a dozen drive thrus within a two mile radius (including the Inland Empire’s very own Taco Bell clone Baker’s).

Rich California cities tend to have a politically unfortunate neighbor to house all the businesses and industries that rich people don’t like nearby. Upland and Pomona seem to share the honor of soaking up Claremont’s vices, crimes and pollution. But even the tattoo parlors, liquor stores and strip clubs here have plentiful parking, nicely landscaped medians and a view of the clouds wreathing Mount Wilson on a clear day.

There’s a lot of of local, non-chain Italian restaurants here. I’m very intrigued by this Costco-sized building called John’s Incredible Pizza Co. I haven’t been able to convince anybody to go with me but photos online suggest it’s like a pizza-themed Dave and Busters.

The first time I heard of Upland was at the end of an interview with the city historian of Monterey Park, who told me she and all of her family had moved to Upland after all of the Chinese immigrants moved in. The next time I encountered Upland was in 2016, when I drove out here to interview a Chinese birth tourist I had connected with on Chineseinla.com. Not much has changed since then, except for the addition of a few housing developments.

But the burritos are all pretty solid, and generally there are a lot of excellent ways to blow your daily caloric limits. There’s a distinct lack of beautiful people in hip coffee shops pursuing nebulous creative careers - Starbucks outclasses and outnumbers most local cafes - and I find that I miss them. Los Angeles always had a way of casting creative strivings and quasi employment in a sexy, purposeful light.

CONSUMING:

Mom’s breakfast sandwich: There’s always a single slice of ham and havarti, a leaf of romaine lettuce and a thick, full round of raw onion. But the protein and bread varies wildly. Sometimes it’s a bagel with an omelette flavored with basil picked from the garden. Or a fried egg and some hamburger in an english muffin, with some kimchi. Last week was leftover strips of ribeye steak and Taiwanese sausage with these mini Costco focaccia buns. I’ve tried to convince her to let me make my own breakfast, but there’s a sandwich on the counter every morning. It’s just easier to eat it than to argue over wasted food to start every day. I’ve grown to enjoy it.

Synonym Magazine: Tien Nguyen, a friend and food writer, was kind enough to send me a few issues recently. I spent an afternoon going through them and there was so much food I’d never heard of. There’s a fascinating piece about this Nigerian fritter, Akara, which has traveled across Africa and throughout the world through enslaved populations. I also love the community cookbook vibes of it, and the spiral binding.

Karl Ove Knausgard Harper’s essay: Found this Delia Cai’s Deez Links, and while I found it too long, it helped me understand how insightful pure introspection can be. This man gazes at his navel and contemplates an entire universe. It’s basically about what it’s like to be alive in an age of insanely powerful technology. It’s the first piece of Knausgaard’s writing I’ve read and I really enjoyed the depth of feeling in it. The image of him terrified, yet internally weeping with nostalgia at a hologram Abba concert was vivid and hilarious. I grew up in a cynical age, one in which it was unimaginable to be so sincerely into Abba.

Gods of the Sea: Whales and Coastal Communities in Northeast Japan: My reading habits are set by whatever reporting project I’m taking on at the moment, which is to say they are schizophrenic. Totally without pattern. I write down all the titles in my agenda and the list reads like I’m trying to confuse a forensic investigator; like I’m desperate to throw the FBI off my trail. I think my tendency to vary my stories a bit wildly comes from my past in newspapers, which made me hyper allergic to feeling pigeonholed into a single subject. That said, this is a really fascinating history of Japanese encounters with whales. Each chapter dives into the biological facts behind a different Japanese whale myth or legend. Many fishermen worshipped whales they understood that their villages were built around ecosystems that the giant mammals kept healthy. Some even rioted and destroyed whaling ports in protest. It’s a carefully told history that surfaces some fine textures of life in pre-modern Japan.

UPCOMING:

Next on Lunch Box: A deep dive on the SL Yamaguchi ekiben, whale, and how the whaling industry became entangled with heartland politics and the Liberal Democratic Party.

Also, I’m planning to rebrand and move off of Substack (maintaining a mirror here). Let me know if you have any advice or ideas for me!

I’ll be at Anime Expo this July 3 and 4, working on a story. Say hello if you’re going!

I’ll be moderating a panel at the AAJA National Convention in Seattle between July 30 and Aug 3.

Look out for the film Rosemead starring Lucy Liu at a festival near you. I wrote the story that the film adapts. I had a chance to see it last year and it made me cry.

Lastly, thank you all for reading and supporting Lunch Box. If you have the means, please support my work with a paid subscription, which comes with archive access and a free laptop sticker. Reach out if you have ideas or subjects you’d like to see me take on, or if you just want to say hello. And please let me know your thoughts on this format.