Last time I was in Japan I lived in Ishikawa-ken where I played a kind of live computer game on New Year's eve. Crowds of us gathered outside a three story temple with long balconies and loads of sliding doors on all sides from which monks dressed as badgers shuffled out in file, scattering beans into the crowd which we had to catch in special nets and then take home and hide in a 'rarely looked-at' corner. The beans would, for the coming year, subtly emit good luck radiowaves - but not for oneself, only for neighbours you hadn't met. It was widely acknowledged in the Ishikawa prefecture that one's good luck came from one's neighbour's secretly generous beans.

This new year, in Kurashiki, was a more sombre, squid-based, affair.

The invisible juice that flows through your bones when you find yourself laughing for no reason at all, escapes through your fingertips as a kind of gas, and can be passed on to your friend by pressing your thumbs against her forehead and humming the theme song to Hawaii-Five-O.

If you ever find yourself shivering with a strange delight don't be surprised if hundreds of laughing Japanese schoolgirls cycle past you, or something like that.

I had an Ikeamare in Ikeashwitz. My girlfriend, Ai-chan, and I were populating a new flat and on the shuttle bus I broke a basic relationship rule and started talking about an ex-girlfriend, Ariadne, who had given me the secret to mastering Ikea. The mention of the messanger put a wrinkle of irk between Ai and I, which I smoothed by emphasising the message; that only hell demands more peace of mind than Ikea.

Inside my chest is a vibe-detecting instrument, the naked pink tip. When I meet people this pink tip leans forward enquiringly, or it vibrates like a pleasantly electrocuted chicken, or it sways with melancholy happiness, or it shrinks away in horror, or it hardens resistingly preparing for battle, or it softens blendingly into yours. Although animal fear might put me on the back foot, or my interest in sex put me on the front, although I might not be paying attention, or I might be paying far too much attention; although, in short, I might be wrong; the pink tip never is.

Kufie the Cat
Animated series following an alien cat in East London. This week Kufie gets his point across by secretly reading people's hearts and then leaping out from behind trees and startling them with an uncannily precise three-word revelation of their unique delusion.

The tingling mass of molecules of my hand hums, spreading calm fuzz and a swell of light sunrising over the surface of my planetary self.

Gordon wished he could be young again, and in love with a beautiful soul-mate, and have a time machine and journey round the world, throughout history, decorating Etruscan tombs, rippling to palaeolithic dances, watching stegosaurus mate and learning the strange language of bees - until the two of them returned back to the present where they would save the world with their insane wisdom and shattering love - instead of being a postman, married to Margaret.

There is the laughter of relief, making the train and slipping through the doors Indy-style, farts at funerals and tiny crimes that take tension away. There is the laughter of exhilaration, throwing yourself into the rapids, and the laughter of emotion, fear, awkwardness and approval. There is the laughter of newly formed groups, binding by creating butts, the laughter of superiority over the out-group, and the laughter of letting in, showing approval to the newly joined. There is the laughter of anxiety, trying to make it all okay with a smile, the peace-keeping lie-smile or rictus grin as you listen to one “it was good / big / weird / bad / interesting / uncomfortable / tiny / beautiful" advert-anecdote after another. And there is the laughter of emotion, of sex and murder.

Personally, I prefer the laughter of recognition.

I recognise large status reversals (the boss suddenly becoming the butler, or vice versa), I recognise dead things becoming alive, I recognise human character- istics given to animals, I recognise the indestructibility and innocence of a fool, I recognise perfect appro- priateness, spontaneity, exaggeration - or hyperbole - the serious reduced to the absurd and the sacred profaned - or farce - far distant ideas linked by puns and subtle surreality, strange timing, strange sizes, strange behaviour, and great beauty. I recognise the insights of a hyper-observant comic-master, here to show me myself, at a slight angle to the universe. I recognise all these things because I am an indestructible fool in a strange world, and it makes me laugh to see this.

But what I recognise most of all, is reality, what is happening. I am not a stranger in this universe. The objective world is my friend - and do we not laugh when a friend approaches? This is why genuinely innocent children and ancient tribes spend most of their time merrily sparkling with amused delight or ringing with bright laughter. When the world is seen as it is, it is surprising, bizarre, grotesque, savage, wild, apocalyptically alive and gayly butcherous; not demented and cruel, but mad, hilariously mad... and I am with it. We are friends, the universe and I. In all joy and horror - friends. This is the laughter of the whole truth.

As you may know, I've been working on a computer game called "Reality" which, now that I live in Japan, I'm going to sell to Nintendo, and they're going to sell it to everyone. The level I'm working on at the moment, which is called "Yawp!" is a driving, running, hunting, swimming, cycling, platform-type affair set across a few different "zones," and, the novel thing about it is that when you lose a life - when you fall off a cliff, or get hit by a car or an asteroid or whatever - the computer - the actual computer in your actual room that is - sets fire to your house, wipes your bank account clean and transports you, naked, to a random country. Or it infects you with a rare parasite that eats your brain and lungs. Or, if you're young and beautiful it makes you physically hideous. Or the reverse. Sometimes it showers you with money, sometimes it endows you with a strange and wonderful talent, like the ability to see all-round 360 degrees, as if your whole body were an eye, and other times it blasts off a leg and beats you to death with it.

The other day I woke up on a tiny uninhabited planet with nothing but a replicating machine for company. There were lots of jobs to do, so I decided to copy myself a couple of hundred times, but the "mes" that emerged were all permanently anxious - and so unpleasant and unreasonable.