Prologue:
“The 15-Year Transfer”
– Refactoring. –
Kowloon, Hong Kong.

Thursday, Aug 1st, 2024
Clear skies / Sudden thunderstorms 35°
17th Floor Meguro, Tokyo

August 1, 2024. Amidst a sweltering heatwave, as the pandemic finally recedes and events worldwide show signs of resurgence, I carved out an opportunity to cross borders once again and head for Hong Kong.
About three weeks later, on August 21, I secured a general understanding to attend a table discussion and a networking event at an international tech conference focused on serverless and open source.
It was a sudden decision, so of course, it’s at my own expense.
I can’t afford to wait for the gears of an organization to turn.
A one-way flight from Tokyo is only about four hours—hardly different from a Shinkansen trip for a domestic business visit.

Fifteen years ago.
Late autumn 2008

Fifteen years ago, late autumn 2008, my journey across the world ended in Hong Kong.
Back then, I used to mutter to myself:

That year brought the 2008 financial crisis.
Five years later, the Great East Japan Earthquake.
Society grew cold again, reminiscent of the situation after the bubble burst in the 1990s.
Dear friends, comrades—everything drifted far apart.
Even learning to play at a local jazz bar lost its spark.
I thought my life would just quietly close like this.

I had nothing left, and not much to lose.
I let go of almost all my CDs, books, and equipment.
What little I kept were the records filled with memories of friends I’d connected with since 1995—the internet’s singular point—and a bundle of letters gifted to someone like me.

Eventually, I moved out of the city apartment where I’d lived for years.
I said my goodbyes to the landlord and neighbors.
In 2020, I bid farewell to the urban-rural town I’d been tied to since 1995.
In a word, I was preparing for the end.

Stray Sheep.
May 2020

What pushed me back into motion was the immediate aftermath—in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, as people grew more distant.

That song felt as if it had turned all my feelings from the past 15 years into a single story.
Abandoned, made to play the villain—the shared worldview held only by us of Generation X (the Lost Generation).
I think at its core, there is a certain loneliness: the feeling that our existence, our stories, are being erased and weathered away.

I don’t need proof of having lived.
My remaining years might just be a slow decay.
But still, I wondered if I could entrust the memories of this adventure to the mind of someone beyond the screen.
I wanted to give something back to the world I found in 1995.
The best way I knew how was to create music.

But could I really bridge a 15-year blank?

Signed.
December 2023

By December, I had signed with a US music distributor.
In December 2023, I began the global release of my new tracks in 15 years on Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, and Spotify.
I launched an official YouTube channel, designed this site (s-ikt.com), and resumed my activities.
I started several other projects too.
So that everyone’s memories wouldn’t fade away.

Today.
Aug 1st, 2024

And today, what I’m chasing in Hong Kong is the world beyond serverless—the cloud-native frontier.
We are on a vector of losing our hardware, while AI is on a vector of gaining it.
We’ve already passed that singular point.
But when AI begins to target our “hardware”—our physical bodies—another singular point will suddenly emerge.
I have the answer ready.
But I want to share what is actually happening at that cutting edge with the SEs who will lead the next generation.

Feeling the world’s vanguard, as 25 years of zero-interest policy comes to an end, riding waves that are still unstable as indicated by every index, we are in a phase of generational shift.
Across the numerous hardships encountered and the friends lost along the way.

Beyond 15 years of stagnation.
Within the span of a finite, short life.
The journey I thought had ended is, by some strange twist of fate, beginning again from the very same place.

I suppose I was just lucky.

Crossing 15 years of space-time, what will I feel in Hong Kong? The fragments of hope I drew back then, which have remained frozen for 15 years. If I don’t at least catch them and gather them myself, I won’t feel truly alive. I’ve kept them waiting for 15 years, after all.

I’ve secured the tickets. But my passport isn’t even ready yet…

“The 15-Year Transfer” Itinerary
2 nights 3 days.

• Index
• Day 1