June in Kyoto arrives like a promise kept reluctantly. The heat settles in gradually, the tourists too, and the city you have known for years starts to be seen through their eyes before disappearing behind their cameras. It is the time of year when I wonder whether I still live in Kyoto or simply cohabit with the idea others have of it.

This week: an autumn walk in Uji that reminded me why I am here, a café that looks like nowhere else, a record I should have put back on much sooner, a shirt that would have been impossible to wear anywhere else, and a reflection on what we lose when a place truly becomes ours.

I went to Uji in November to see the momiji away from the crowds. Twenty minutes by train from Kyoto, and suddenly the people thin out, or at least they stop forming a mass. By the Uji-gawa, a woman had stopped, phone pressed to her ear, facing the trees burning behind her in red, yellow, orange. She was not looking at the view. She was somewhere else entirely. The autumn happened around her anyway.

Uji is a city people pass through for the tea and the Genji. It deserves to be visited differently, outside the official seasons, without an itinerary. That day the water was still and the colours reflected beneath it with a precision that made everything feel like it existed twice.

I discovered Shara Worden through La Blogothèque's Concerts à Emporter, that series of films where artists performed unannounced in the streets of Paris in the mid-2000s. She was part of Sufjan Stevens' band at the time, and watching her in those videos, somewhere between a Parisian courtyard and a moving crowd, made it immediately clear she was operating on a different frequency. I saw her perform in Paris several times after that.

Bring Me the Workhorse, released in 2006, was the record that convinced me pop could be architectural. Worden's voice is the kind that makes the room feel smaller, a dramatic, almost operatic instrument that she uses with precision rather than excess. The arrangements build around it in layers that look nothing alike but hold together: chamber strings, electronic textures, percussion that arrives exactly when you stop expecting it. Nothing is decorative.

I put it back on recently and it has aged exactly as it should. Not nostalgic, not dated. Just dense. The kind of record you wonder why you ever put away.

For years I bought the small SouSou formats: socks, a mask. The easy entry points, the ones that require no particular conviction. Then recently I bought a shirt covered in black linocut cat heads on white, and a wide-cut red linen trouser for summer. The kind of outfit that makes complete sense once you live here long enough.

SouSou was founded in Kyoto in 2002 by three people: textile designer Katsuji Wakisaka, who was the first Japanese designer ever hired by Marimekko back in 1968, apparel designer Takeshi Wakabayashi, and architect Hisanobu Tsujimura. That Marimekko connection is not incidental. You can feel it in the prints: bold, graphic, unapologetically flat. But routed entirely through Japanese forms, tabi shoes, jinbei, work jackets rebuilt from the inside out.

The brand has a quiet cult following that extends further than you might expect. During Covid, a stranger stopped me on the street in Paris, pointed at my mask and said: "hey, is that SouSou?" That moment said more about the brand than any press coverage. It exists for Kyoto, in Kyoto, at its own pace, and people find it anyway. I am now seriously considering a pair of their tabi sneakers . I did not plan to start a collection.

Before I let you go, I’ve just uploaded a new video on the channel. Come with me across the Quiet and slow Kyoto for a beautiful walk

Stay grounded, and see you next week. - Nicolas

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