This has been the happiest week of my life, but in some ways also the most difficult. Let me back up to last Friday, May 29. When I start writing this, I am sitting in a car park outside a children’s hospital in Tokyo. The time is 2.25 and the rain has finally stopped. We came …
I love the ceiling in our apartment; in a way it feels like we live in an old factory when I look at the ceiling and see the uneven surfaces, the rough unpolished cement, the imprints that the wood used for making the ceiling has left behind. I fantasised about living in an old factory …
I could not imagine Tokyo being this quiet. It has been Golden Week, the longish Japanese spring holiday, and with traveling out of the question and shops and parks closed, people seem to have been quietly staying at home; streets almost empty and only a few trucks on the nearby highway. I woke up early …
Is this the new normal now? To be afraid of people, to see a city shut down. When going to the supermarket I felt like I was in the middle of a zombie-movie. And I really do not like those – a half deserted town with stores closed and where people are slowly walking, hiding …
Tokyo is under state of emergency and my wife is on maternity leave from today – a beautiful symmetry in the middle of all worry and despair. She has dutifully been going to the office, taking great care to stay as safe as possible. お疲れさま my love. Now finally our maternity leave begins and we …
There is normally not much vacation for people in Japan. This I do not like. But on the other hand there is a lot of red days scattered around the year, making long weekends something of a not so unusual golden lining to everyday life. This I love. So Monday was day off. Sunday was …
If you commute long enough it is inevitable to start recognizing the people on the train. We are following our habits, and our habits have the habit of placing us next to one another time and time again. So there is the man with a broken arm often occupying a corner priority seat. Then there …
On the train today we managed to get a seat for my wife. I find that holding her bag with the maternity badge up in front of me increases the chance of someone obliging, offering their seat to my wife. So my wife was sitting and I stood in front of her, looking at her. …
Today is my birthday. And I am angry. I am sure there is some connection, but today I am just… I am simply angry, angry at people. And a little bit at my wife too. Those morning commutes on an overly surrealistically crowded train, where young people sit on priority seats, sleeping, playing games, ignoring …
Today, the air seemed unusually clear; like the mountains in the distance suddenly had moved closer to Tokyo. But then, clarity always has that special power of cutting distances in halves, breaching voids that previously seemed unbreachable. A clear thought, untainted by the past, open to all possibilities, unattached to a predetermined outcome, connected to …
When does something become a habit? After one time? Hardly. Two times? Three? Five or ten? Does it even matter? Not really I think – it is all about feelings. So when I feel like it has become a habit to every night prepare the rice for the morning. And then in the morning make …
Never more. Today was a nevermore-day, a day I only want to forget. And at the same time a day I really need to remember. Nevermore-days I have reluctantly come to find, are the steppingstones towards a future where I am trying to renew myself, to become a hopefully better version of the human I …