Today’s guest is Minami, the owner and founder of Featherheart Books. This is, unintentionally, a bit of a tangential post to my last newsletter about my favorite bookshops and why bookshops matter. This will come as no surprise to those who are aware of Tokyo’s current cultural zeitgeist, but for those who aren’t — Featherheart Books is having a moment. It’s an online English-language bookshop that crowdfunded its way (a whopping ¥5,768,690, with the help of 269 people!!!) into becoming a physical bookshop in the heart of Tokyo. 読書の秋 (a Japanese term for autumn reading) has never felt more tempting.

Minami’s dream has always been to create a bookshop. She used to work at a UN agency in Geneva, specifically on urgent responses supporting staff members based in incredibly tough situations. She did a 180 and decided to pursue her dream of building Featherheart Books from the ground up. As its name suggests, I can’t wait to see her vision come to life: something that will indeed feel, and I quote, “whimsical, open to all people, and old-timey.”

In this week-in-life, she talks about the day she went bookshelf shopping for Featherheart Books’ new home, a shopping trip that ultimately didn’t go so well. She describes what a stocktaking day looks like, alongside sharing some photos of the new space. You can also hear more about Minami’s life and her in-depth thoughts on the bookstore over at Fickle Human Radio show hosted by aka Leiya.

It is Tokyo’s first English-language independent bookstore, and if you’re visiting Tokyo anytime soon, keep your eyes peeled for news of their grand opening. Tokyo already has a robust literary scene, but it just got a little richer.

Featherheart Books will open in a few months in Hatagaya, a beloved neighborhood for many.

Address : 3-31-3 Hatagaya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 〒151-0072

You can check their activity on the very up-to-date Instagram @Featherheart Books and remember to buy books from bookshops.

Alright, enough enough — enjoy x

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Saturday, July 25

I’m not sure why I thought it would be a good idea to visit Ginza on a Saturday, but the imperative to find the perfect shelf for the bookstore overrode my reluctance to suffer the summer ickiness. The bookshelf I had been eyeing for the past month happened to be in the middle of Ginza, in a 10 storey building filled to the brim with minimalistic merchandise and greedy shoppers. If you consume/buy/own/have a lot of products by a global conglomerate that sells Japanese minimalism, would one still consider themselves a minimalist?

Armed with my parents, we entered the store like the Three Musketeers with the goal of finding the bookshelf. It happened to be on the top floor, so we dodged frantic shoppers, squeezed in between columns, carefully avoided stray baskets filled with instant packets of food, and replenished our oxygen levels from the breeze of walking up an escalator. And then, we made it to furniture heaven.

Seeing the shelf in person, however, was underwhelming. Rather than the full 121cm Stacking Shelf, Wide Type (in oak or walnut!), only a portion of it was on display. The meagre 81.5cm two-shelf system was beautifully made but in dimensions that would be slightly awkward for the average paperback. Facing the bookshelf with these worries led me down a spiral, questioning the decisions I had made about bookshelves while circling around the furniture.

Angled T-shelves are must haves, or are they? Franklin Fixtures says that they would boost sales by 30%. With the precarity of running a business in Japan at this age, let alone a bookshop, 30% is not something worth missing out on. How do floating shelves even float? Am I as resourceful as those DIY influencers who built their own home libraries out of IKEA Billy shelves? Would ‘fake it ’til you make it’ apply to carpentry? Can I import shelves from overseas? And if I do, am I undermining local carpenter craftsmanship? Do I even have enough money for that? Crown moulding is the right choice. But will they make the bookstore feel… colonial?

I think we spent about 45 minutes in the building. My parents casually browsed and kept a distance from me while my brain began to melt with worries and impossibilities. I decided that the once-perfect bookshelf was in fact not for our bookstore, or at least not the right choice as our main shelving unit. Or at least, this is the conclusion I have come to almost a week and several more spirals later.

Before the day’s end, I made at least two good decisions. One: I bought a UV umbrella, as black as the black hole I created in my brain from the spiral earlier that day. Two: last minute plans were made with an old friend to meet the next day.

Sunday, July 26

After much deliberation and a twinned eureka moment the night before, I took a train to the other side of Tokyo to the Harry Potter Studio in Nerima.

With my newfound ability to not get motion sickness from reading in the train, I read a few chapters of Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller by Oliver Darkshire. The book is part of a homemade curriculum on bookselling. Though light on the technicalities of bookselling, the author shows the beauty in people’s relationship to books through his anecdotes about Sotheran’s.

Simultaneously, within the dark recesses of my brain, I was contemplating the transphobia of She Who Must Not Be Named given that she’s the creator of this world and profits from anything related to it. To what end am I complicit, and where does it start? The comfort of sitting next to a woman who was also reading a book could only do so much to assuage my guilt. I concluded that it’s time for me to rewatch The Good Place to further ponder on this.

Nostalgia and capitalism took over for the next five hours as we found ourselves walking around the fictional world we grew up reading and watching.

We didn’t know what we were getting ourselves in our refusal to read up about the studio the night before. It was a proper studio with several stage sets almost fully encompassing an entire park. With three gift shops, two restaurants, two cafes, and interactive bits you’d think you were in a theme park.

The Great Hall reminded me of some long-lost memories maxed out on pretension and privilege. Formal dinners in a similarly grand hall, wearing robes and eating a famed chocolate pudding made by a former patissier of the royal family. Echoed conversations of tailcoats, cigar breaks, and the fastest way to secure lordship intertwined with projected ghosts, goblin masks, and butterbeer.

In the evening, Ao and I went for a walk at the nearest park. They recently renovated the dog run so we decided to walk by it. Big dogs, small dogs, まめ dogs - they were all there! Despite encouraging her to approach the fence where a large, Fang-like dog was waiting for her, Ao turned around and walked in the opposite direction. I wonder if she’s becoming too much like me.

Once back home, I soaked Ao’s paws in some epsom salted water to soothe her paws from the heat. She fell into a deep sleep until the next morning.

Monday, July 27

In the wee hours of the morning, I finalised the zine that we (me and 13 very talented writers & artists) created as part of Featherheart Books’ crowdfunding campaign. In fact, I finalised it nine times only to see a chunk of unjustified text, a misplaced image, and misspelled name in the version shared with everyone who took part in the project. Once those and a few stray mistakes were fixed, I shared another final version to the contributors and sent the zine to printers (finally)! I decided that any typos or issues in the final version will just have to be.

In the afternoon, I drove to our secret warehouse up north to send out some orders and for some serious stocktaking. Despite high fuel costs, driving has become necessary when simultaneously living in two prefectures with a velcro dog. The drive wasn’t any different this day, a competition of egos on the road based on how fast you drive and what you’re driving. One fun thing about this particular highway is that sometimes you’ll get to see people in vintage cars and dressed up as if they’re on their way to party in a different decade. Ao, as usual, slept the whole way. I listened to a podcast about the World Cup.

A small parcel had arrived while we were in the city and it was our new summer bookmark. I accidentally ordered double the number of bookmarks I needed because of a technical issue with a new printing company I was trying out. 200 bookmarks from two printing companies. I put them next to the remaining stash of extra campaign-specific bookmarks. At least it’ll last us until the end of summer.

A few orders needed to be fulfilled so I went on a treasure hunt for the books, set up the printer, picked out the packaging, wrapped the books, and printed out labels. After the horror story of a returned order1 that happened recently, I made sure to wrap the books carefully and liberally added extra stuffing. I waited for the delivery person to come pick them up, a Vitamin C drink on hand to offer.

Tuesday, July 28

A stocktaking day!

It had been a while since our last stocktake. With the back-to-back pop up events and campaigning earlier this year, I didn’t have time for it. Since then, we’ve also grown our inventory quite a bit so it was taking a while to get through everything. This was the third day of updating our inventory. Accompanying me were my dog, splashing about in her makeshift pool (a garden tub filled with water) and Heroes, which I haven’t watched an episode of in over a decade. It has a lot more Japanese than I recall.

The whole day fell into a fractured rhythm. Pull a book out. Scan the barcode. Scan the barcode again. Face the book at an angle, scan the barcode. The software doesn’t recognise the barcode? Find the title in the online inventory and update the barcode number. Update the tags and fix the description. Count the number of copies. Put the book back. Repeat. It was a troublesome way to practice gratitude, but my goodness how grateful was I every time I scanned a book that didn’t show up with an error.

At 9:30pm and about 600 titles in, the stocktaking software started to lag. It started to take over a minute to log a single book. Done with all of the non-fiction, children’s, and genre books, I closed my laptop and moved on to breaking down cardboard boxes before winding down for the day.

Added another thing to the to do list: find a new stocktaking app.2

Wednesday, July 29

The second day off this week! A rare but welcome rest since I don’t have regular working hours or days yet. This one was much needed as I was sore from moving boxes around the previous day from morning to evening. Or maybe it was because I had carried Ao up the stairs several times.

I spent most of the day covered in ロイヒ (on all joints and major muscles) while puttering through another season of Heroes. I’m now convinced that Hiro Nakamura is the driving force of the entire series. Just like most of my rest days, I stayed indoors either on or in the vicinity of the couch and in front of the TV. While ignoring the never-ending to do list, I caught up on correspondence and finally returned to the search for bookshelves.

Every once in a while, Ao nudged a ball towards me and we played indoors. With the unbearable heat and her reluctance to wear dog shoes, we’ve shifted from playing football in the field to perfecting her volleyball skills. As of this day, we made it up to five passes between us before the ball fell to the ground.

The rest of the day oscillated between watching TV, pretending not to think about work, and entertaining Ao. We went for a walk in the evening, during which Ao was threatening to give up walking every 500 meters.

Once the rest of the house was asleep, I returned to work. I resumed my obsessive search for shelving options. At around 11pm, an email from the real estate agent arrived with a draft contract for the shop space! In my excitement, I began reviewing the contract and added to the to do list a few more things to do in the upcoming weeks.

This series is a monthly-ish series. Until next time <3 comment below and let me know who’s life you would like to see next x

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I’m officially at that age where I reminisce about the good old days. I thought of this when I went to McDonald’s recently and had to order through one of those machines. I can’t believe that in the life we’re living, ordering at the register through a person will become a novelty at some point. The abundance of QR codes, apps, and machine ordering is not a well-lived life.

Summer is an incredibly nostalgic time of year for me. There are just so many — too many, actually — memories that I have lived through multiple stages of my life that, in hindsight, I find almost fake. The other day, I was listening to a podcast with Olivia Wilde as the guest. She mentioned that “as a kid, summer shapes who we are, I think.” I’ve thought about this a lot since then. A lot of the core memories of my childhood and beyond happened during summer. Whether I was shaped by those memories as an individual, or whether summer just left a mark because I constantly had my bathing suit on, would find any excuse to douse myself in a body of water, and was allowed to eat kakigori and buy ice cream all the time, or whether I just pay more attention to summer because it’s my favorite season, I don’t know. I had to claw through my memory to investigate if this was true: did summer shape who I am?

Growing up in Japan as a mixed-race kid, summertime meant that I could visit two very different families: my American side and my Japanese side. My dad is from Matsumoto, a town in Nagano Prefecture, so even in Japan, we had a place to go back to and see a side of Japan that we weren’t so familiar with. I was a well-travelled infant; I already had a passport only months after I was born. Now there’s a direct flight to Portland, but back then, we always had to transfer at San José Airport. By the age of five, I had heard the word “San José” way too many times for an average child. My mom had five other siblings, and they all got married pretty young, which meant that I was blessed with an abundance of cousins. That alone was enough reason for a tiny Japanese girl to get excited about seeing the family she only saw once a year, but it was also a time when I got to experience so many firsts.

We would go for the whole duration of summer, and this was when I also always celebrated my birthday in Portland. One time, we went to Chuck E Cheese, which was the only one in Portland and is now closed post-COVID. We would have a family barbecue every summer by the lake, and I would be allowed to eat however many Cheetos Puffs or Mother’s Original Circus Animal Cookies I wanted. We had a family camp gathering one time, and the adults made a custom camp T-shirt, which I still use as my pajamas. It was the first time I made s’mores, and I really believed there was nothing else better in this world. It’s when I tried red licorice for the first time, and then I became addicted to Fruit Roll-Ups, showing my blue and green, colorful tongue from the back of the car to annoy my mom and gramma.

Auntie Jan had a tree in her backyard that, if I rubbed it, smelled like peanut butter. I was mesmerized. Aunt Mary had a goat farm — like a massive farm where she used to have the biggest trampoline and just so many animals. I used to help milk the goats early in the morning, help with the state fair show, roll in the hay, and play in the attic. I sat in a high school class with my cousin Susie once when I was still a wee child. I was attached to Susie’s hip because I was way too scared to roam around on my own. I discovered that the basement in any house is where the adults will watch the game, and I would be too scared to go in. There was also a year when I got angry at my mom because she spoke in Japanese at the supermarket. I replied to her very sternly, “This is not Japan.”

There was just too much to do in Portland — so vast, so exuberant, so different from what I knew. It felt like this big secret that only I knew, and my friends back in Japan would never know. What’s so interesting is that the differentness I witnessed was never about discerning my identity, belonging, being mixed-race, being a “third culture kid,” or any of these liminal ways of thinking about the self. Sure, I had those teenage moments of not wanting to be different or “weird” by speaking a foreign language in public, but I secretly loved that part of myself, too.

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I was so excited to share, even to show off, my summer to my friends at school. Every Japanese kid has to come back to school once summer break is over with their 自由研究 project, also known as the summer research project. The topic is completely up to you — and every year, while it wasn’t research per se, I would do a stitching project or learn quilting from my gramma. At our school, kids would showcase their projects in the hallway, and I would place family pictures from that summer in an album and display it alongside my textile project. I was so proud of it all: to be the only kid who spoke English, to be the only kid who went to America every summer, to be the only kid with a foreign mother, to be completely borderless and feel like I belonged everywhere, all at once.

None of it was chalked up as differences or otherness; this only happened later in life, when someone else decided to have an opinion about it. Why do you look different? Do you dream in English or Japanese? You can wear that because you are hafu. All the noise that really doesn’t matter to living a life. I lived a simple life that was all about joy in its purest form. The only focus in life was to live it presently, without any insecurities, jealousies, or self-absorption — these would come later in life, but I’m reminded of this life as I look back. I had my mom send me all the photos from the family album and she said, these photos are only a week apart from each other! It’s incredible; the resilience and the adjustment a child can possess. She’s wearing a swimming suit to water the plants, then can wear a uniform and be a part of something much different from life in America : she can do both.

Gradually, you become aware of others and their opinions and thoughts about you, and you are shaped by them. You become less spontaneous and more calculated; less gung-ho and more dull; less joyful and more conformist.

On this very hot and humid summer day — alas, far from my ideal summer conditions — I recollect the memories that, upon reflection, shaped me but, more importantly, have been renewed and even repurposed over time. And that’s a well-lived life to me.

Oh, to remember my sun-kissed skin, with more freckles and age spots that I will think about later. My favorite dress that required no effort to put on. Trying to sleep upright so my face paint from the fair wouldn’t come off ever. Watering the plants outside in my swimming suit. Always playing outside and getting splinters from the porch. The pink, iridescent tassels sprouting from my bike, left in gramma’s garage until my next visit. The gamine of the bunch, an ebullient me.

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Things I liked recently

• This Corn and Parmesan pasta. The corn cub broth was incredible.

• This incredible interview piece with the author Caro Claire Burke on the new yorker. “How Caro Claire Burke Wrote the Biggest Book of the Year.” She is so smart. If you haven’t listened to her podcast yet, you should!

• Through the interview above, I saw the mention of Hannah Friedman who is a screenwriter. Hannah Friedman’s 12 writing for TV do’s & don’ts was a good note for writers of all kinds.

• This interview with Olivia Wilde on Armchair. OW is an incredible communicator? talker? speaker? and she has so many good stories.

• I watched two true crime docu series on Netflix!!! Who am I? Maternal Instinct and The Idaho murders . Both series touch on the subject of death penalty and I think this is such a good topic to rile people up (or not) at a dinner party. As for the woman in Maternal instinct, she is the youngest woman on death row in Texas.

• The editor’s at N+1 exploring why everything is so ugly? This piece came out two years ago I believe.

• Who knew I would be buying shoes from Nike…but I went to the employee discount store recently, and got myself these Air Rift. It makes you feel cool and it’s so light.

• This Dolly Alderton’s love and hate list. She likes, “A Friend Messaging: “Guess Who I Ran Into Last Night” Followed By The Notification “Recording Voice Note” For Four Minutes Plus” — this is why I love this woman.

• Jake Adelstein, the journalist who wrote Tokyo Vise posted on Instagram a pretty good caption re permanent residency debate. A country blaming immigrants and foreigners is just so text book…. smh.

• Should We Do More to Fight Lookism? on the new yorker. I really thought about a lot of the language that’s used in Japan for this sort of stuff — maybe it’s a next post idea.

Okay! Don’t work too much! Giggle! Live! Play!

See you next time x

Megumi

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In recent years, I have become increasingly allergic to doing what everyone else is doing, or in this case, reading what everyone else is reading. It’s not a discussion about being ‘highbrow’ or that I’m one of those people who’s like, ‘Everything is just so boring now,’ although there is some truth to that. Sameness is proliferating everywhere, this is just how the world, or more specifically the internet medium world is like now. I became genuinely curious: is everyone really into the same thing, or rather, I am intrigued. Do people just not know what they want unless a stranger puts it in front of them? Can we really not think for ourselves anymore?

I’m not saying that I was never this person. Like, did I buy Buly body oil that smells of roses a decade ago because it was what all the Japanese women were talking about, and I still have it in my bathroom half-used a decade later? Most recently, I bought a brow gel from NYX because a beauty influencer recommended it as “the best one out there.” It literally doesn’t do anything lol, and once again, I was reminded to never buy something from an influencer, like ever.

You can call it maturity or growth as a thirty-something-year-old woman, but I’ve been becoming more sure, or at least have some sense, of my own taste now, so it’s easier for me to decide what I’m going to pay attention to or spend my money on. In terms of materialistic things, It’s actually a joy to really take my time and think about what I really want at that moment. After a hard look at it, I go, maybe not now but I’ll come back to it in two months. Usually, I completely forget about it by then.

I used to be so skeptical when it came to people visiting Japan as well. It’s true that everyone that I speak to wanted, or wants, to visit. But surely not all foreigners are into kawaii things or are anime/manga otaku? I understand that there are other reasons to visit Japan (are there though? I’m joking, I’m joking... sort of), but I loved when I once heard someone say, “Japan wasn’t for me, I think.” She even sounded hesitant saying it out loud because of the scrutiny she would receive for that statement, but I was proud of this person. Oh, how refreshing. Finally, someone who could admit out loud that not everything everyone else is doing is for you. Importantly, it doesn’t have to be for you, nor should it ever be.

I was listening to a podcast on the topic of the rise of cosmetic surgery a few months ago and discovered a theory called mimetic theory by the philosopher René Girard. He introduced this theory in 1959, arguing that humans don’t really have their own individual desires, but rather learn through imitation to want the same things other people want. He once said that individualism is a formidable lie and that human desire is not individual but collective or social. Similarly, a theory that Sigmund Freud is known for as well is that we are “stuck” in our past and don’t make most of our own choices. Contrary to these theories, I want to believe that there is such a thing as individual desire and that we are capable of thinking for ourselves, like Adam Phillips, a prolific London-based psychoanalyst I found through ‘s 15 things podcast recommendation, who believes that “we are our choices.” While he is known to be an analyst, he also believes in Pragmatism, which is the idea that we are capable of asking ourselves, “What do you want, and how do you get there?”

Our current consumer capitalism is constantly directing us to want what others have. I think it’s easy for us to recognize this because it’s pretty evident in our day-to-day lives, but what’s incredibly difficult, yet the most important part of life for me at least, is to inherently understand what we want as individuals.

In this case, what we want to read. During my travels, I went to a lot of bookstores, and the ones that are not independently owned, like Hatchard’s, Waterstones, and Foyles (all owned by Waterstones), had the exact same books everywhere. To be fair, I live in Japan, so it is refreshing to just walk through an English bookstore, let alone one in London, but I just felt bored and uninterested in them after one visit. There was no discovery, no excitement. In fact, I was instantly put off by the same displays everywhere and the bestsellers that everyone else is currently reading. I want to read Yesteryear very much, but it felt like an ad popping up on my screen every time I saw Yesteryear in bookshops: ah!!! ah!!! agh!!!! You can’t avoid it.

I do want to say that these bookstores, just like any other businesses, need to make money, and the placement of books and their choice to stock certain books that “sell” is crucial for that. I am, of course, empathetic to that, and I want the publishing industry to win so that the rest of us can! (As if!!!) (Side note: this piece by a book buyer “Who decides what goes on bookstore shelves?” by is so so informative on this topic.) I don’t want to be told by the corporate cog of a machine what I should be buying or what I should be reading, I want to make that decision on my own; it’s like what Sam says to me all the time when I say I have to do something. “No, you get to,” he says with pure joy. Needless to say, I would of course love to know what the staff who have put together the bookshop by their own hands and brains have liked recently. My favorite spot in bookshops was the staff recommendations section.

The preamble has become much too long, but I hope you enjoy this list of bookshops I’ve been to and wholeheartedly want readers to go to as well. Thank you to all independent bookshops for your hard work so we can discover a new world <3

Is this post, accidentally, a foreshadowing of the next guest on Tell me about your week!? MAYBE! (Further below, in no particular order.)

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1: Burley Fisher Books

400 Kingsland Rd, London |Instagram

An absolutely random find in Dalston on my last day in London. I stumbled upon it while walking from Dusty Knuckles to secure a loaf of sourdough, then to Hackney, then Shoreditch. I swear, every place, restaurant, or cafe I stumbled upon by accident, as opposed to seeing it on Instagram or TikTok, has been the best, best, best experience ever.

What I loved about this bookshop was how little I knew of any of the books that were out front and center. There was almost no contemporary fiction that I’ve been seeing at every bookshop upfront. The window had books I’d never seen before. Outside, there was a birthday card stand and a used book section. Lots of zines, a bulletin board for upcoming events, and local event posters everywhere. (The basement floor was dedicated to secondhand books.)

I am biased with this one because it was a joy to have walked by it by accident, but I also found a book that is relatively niche and specific, which I couldn’t find anywhere else, but I did here. I was looking for Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno (translated from French). It was a recommendation in ‘s newsletter and has been on my to-read list for months, maybe years. I just had a feeling that they might have it, and sure enough, as I was following the alphabetized shelf, there it was! I was elated. I picked it up so fast. Another coincidental find was Notes on “Camp” by Susan Sontag.

I would love to ask the owner how they decide which books to stock and what their intentions are. I don’t think I saw Yesteryear... which is wild because that book is EVERYWHERE.

2: Libreria BookShop

65 Hanbury St, London | Instagram

I’ve been following Libreria on Instagram because they seem to host interesting monthly Cultural Programs. They also host a lot of writers’ workshops too! It’s a good place to keep an eye out when you are in London and looking for things to do.

It’s a bookshop curated by Second Home, which is a company that operates coworking spaces in London and Lisbon. (I wonder if it’s a popular coworking space?) There were cute nooks to read in. The staff recommendations were not handwritten but typed out, which I know is a teeny detail, but as English isn’t my first language, written English, let alone cursive, takes me longer to read through, so I loved that little touch. They display their books in a way that takes up space, which aesthetically is nice and makes it so easy to spot books as a consumer. Though, this means there is limited space for bookshelves, which I’m sure takes a lot of pride and time to consider which books to carry.

3: London Review Bookshop

14-16 Bury Pl, London | Instagram

If ever I write a book, it will be an honor and a dream to have it here. As suspected, LRB was really, really up my alley, very literary-focused. No surprise, as it’s run by the independent literary magazine London Review of Books. I should have bought a copy of their June issue that was upfront, but instead I gulped down this review piece written by Johanna Biggs for Famesick, standing by the register.

The best and easiest way I can describe this bookstore is less poppy and more polished. Although, I did buy a very poppy tote bag there. You know the red stripy one? I can confirm it’s incredibly durable and a great beach bag as well. They post their current bestsellers on Instagram, which should give you a good idea of what they have. The best part of the bookshop is their staff recommendation selection on the left-hand side when you enter. Each book has a handwritten note by a staff member. I was convinced by either Johnny or John or some name that starts with a J... and got a copy of Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin, published in 1978. I appreciate a bookshop recommending a book that’s not new but from the backlist. Oh, their podcast is also excellent. I had a listen to the Polly Barton episode.

4: Brick Lane Bookshop

166 Brick Ln, London | Instagram

There are just so many good independent bookshops everywhere in London!! This one is in East London. I went there during the weekend, and there were street food vendors, and it was extremely hot. I wish I had been able to stick around there for longer... but alas, there was no aircon. The bookshop was packed with people, and I was sweaty and hot from walking around all day. But! This was where I found Momo Yamaguchi’s Hello, Limerence (the last copy!!) and found Polyester Magazine‘s book of essays, Book of (Bad) Taste. It felt like there were many books by London-based authors.

They host an incredible number of book launches and events (just enough reason to follow them online), and you can submit your short story (UK residents only, it seems) as well. I love a bookshop that elevates and supports new voices in publishing.

5: Lala books

4a Grove Ln, London | Instagram

A solo female-owned bookshop that I had on my list for ages. I was going to attend Polly Barton’s event for her new book, but unfortunately I couldn’t make it, so I made a visit during the day. In terms of selection, it was almost exclusively new-release contemporary fiction, so it felt like I’d already seen most of the books they had. I did love their dedicated Fitzcarraldo editions wall.

One thing so worth shouting out is that they do such an incredible job of making books accessible to all. For the event above that I couldn’t attend, the flyer said that they would give you a free ticket, no questions asked. London is just too expensive, especially with the Yen currency at the moment, so I emailed the owner, and within an hour I received a response and a free ticket. In the store, there’s an impressive system where there are gift vouchers for £5, £10, and £15 for those who can’t afford a book at the moment. Again, no strings attached, no questions asked. The initiative is supported by customers, which I find incredible! You can tell by this sad post when their store was broken into that the owner is very generous and the bookshop exists purely for the joy of books.

Aside from book shopping, out of all the bookshop merch, they had the cutest tees.

6: Salted Books

CC do Marquês de Abrantes 96 | Instagram

“Buy books from bookshops, not a billionaire.” I loved seeing bookshops owned by women both in Lisbon and Porto. I ended up spending nearly an hour here and was almost late for my dinner reservation! If I had to guess, the owner and I have similar taste in books. I saw a Sheila Heti book and asked if they had Pure Colour, which they didn’t at the time, but the owner said, “Which reminds me, I should restock that.”

There were too many books I wanted to read here, and when I saw How to Kill a Language by Sophia Smith Galer, which I wrote about her podcast here before too, I thought I’d circle back after I browsed through the store and buy it. Then, after fifteen minutes or so, the last copy was taken by a different customer! I asked if they had another copy, and they said, “We sold so many this week — which again, I have to restock too.” I adored this exchange.

A quick shoutout. I went to Rosebud Bookshop in Porto and participated in their Heart, The Lover book club. It felt like a Brooklyn brick-and-mortar bookshop, even though I haven’t been to one. I’m sure that’s how it would feel to go to your local bookshop and bookclub. She also organized for us to have a free drink ticket from the cafe next door, which I was grateful for and delighted by.

7: The King’s road Waterstones

158 King’s Rd, London | Instagram

I’m only shouting out Waterstones — the King’s Road one in Chelsea!!! — because I went there for the for The Kitchen Book event, and I was floored by how huge the place was. The staircases felt very à la Victorian to me. This was the only time I popped by Chelsea, but is this what everywhere feels like in that neighborhood? Expensive and lush; not a place I felt like I should be roaming around in my flip-flops.

Other mentions would be... Artwords Bookshop in Hackney on Broadway Market. It’s in a cool spot with a ton of outdoor seating and places to grab a drink, and they had a market going on during the weekend. The shop sign is very cute, and they have mostly art books and magazines, but their children’s book section might be a good one to know for a gift someday. Our friend got a psychedelic-like mushroom dictionary for kids; visually stimulating even for an adult. I explored Herne Hill one weekend, and Herne Hill Books was very cute, but alas, there was no AC, so I didn’t stay for long. I feel like Ensemble in Marseille is already pretty well known, but it’s still so cool to visit. I’m obsessed with their chairs and this lamp. A brand based in the Netherlands called the Satellite Lamp — retail price is at $9,695. (haha)

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Things I liked recently

• ‘s Morning Person is moving to Petreon. I’m already a yearly subscriber so I opted into a subscription over at Petreon. She writes about the decision here and I increasingly feel skeptical to be on here…

• writes a nice newsletter for easy but interesting twist on traditional dishes from around the world. This Patatas Bravas is my next weekend project and this Pad Kra Pao as well.

• My friend wrote a great piece on Japan’s food sexism (yup, you heard it right) “Let Men Eat Cake (and Women Eat Ramen” for The Conversationalist. Amazing title. I loled at this very obvious, but the difficult reality we live in : ‘The food doesn’t care, so why should we?’

• I’m almost like should I have gone to London during this festival? lol The London Literature Festival curated by Dua Lipa seems incredible. The conversations and panelists!!

• On my birthday, I went to the translation exhibition that was put together at the Waseda University’s Haruki Murakami’s library. It’s free so worth stopping by. It’s very small, but I especially loved Shibata san’s method of translating text.

• I’m kinda annoyed at myself that someone beat me to it but I’m really thinking about travel and what does this really mean in today’s world. I saw this article making the rounds on Instagram written by Sarah Kanaan for Roe Magazine, “Stop Calling It Travel. You’re Following an Itinerary Written by TikTok.” It’s sickening how true this is.

• Also another Instagram find written by Sapphire Ketchup for O.Cult. “The agony and the ecstasy of having Asian tastebuds.” Every sentence, I was humming and mmhhhing. I craved noodles and broth so much at the end up my trip, I had some pho in Lisbon. No one needs to know about this, no one.

• This is more of a travel hack that I saw someone else write about once, but go to a bakery before the day you leave. Zip it up or put it in an airtight container and eat it for breakfast the next day at home. I did this with a loaf of Sourdough from Dusty Knuckles and some sausage rolls, and I thanked my past self. I also brought back Comte and a tab of ricotta lol which even with London standards, it’s still cheap getting it there than in Japan.

• It feels like something extra special when you read a hack on a magazine. I picked up a free Stylist issue at the London airport and found this Iced coconut water americano. It’s just espresso and coconut water, but it’s so refreshing. As it says, it is a teeny bit salty!! If you like different kinds of coffee, i think you should try it. It’s incredibly refreshing. If you don’t like coconut water, there’s no use in trying I think. Speaking of coffee, I hate that I could only find this video (sigh) but Hailey Bieber’s everyday coffee order does sound…. so good.

  

• I discovered by reading her piece on her website, “Everything’s fine.” and she recommends a lot of music that I’ve never heard of including this Brazilian group Curió Curió (Bandcamp link meant something promising) and it’s such a tune.

• I’m practicing sobriety! It’s really not a big deal but I wanted to try since I was drinking 33 days straight while I was traveling and felt my body just change. After a certain 30 something age, shit just changes. I drank on three occasions since I was back, my birthday, Sam’s and a dinner with my parents, and I want to try for just a month. I’m grateful for any mocktail recs or tips or dos for practicing dry summer. (A cold beer, who?) I saw that “smoked water” is a thing while I read a recipe for a Rosemary Paloma to make it virgin.

I think I’m done for today! Phew! Please tell me your favorite local bookshop!!! See you soon! xx Megumi

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The dip into the Mediterranean does something to you. You feel free, sexy, youthful, horny—everything feels indulgent. Marseille’s streets are incredibly dirty. No one seems to have the concept of trash cans. The garbage collectors dump the trash onto the street for someone else to clean up. It’s a little bizarre.

I’m writing this from my hotel in San Sebastian, which I paid way too much money for. Thankfully, I’ve been having good hotel and apartment experiences so far. (let’s hope so, because they’re not cheap!) I read somewhere recently that someone said, “I’m at an age now where hotels actually matter, and I want to come back to a room that’s nice and exciting.” I am happy to report that I am at this age now too. When I stayed at the Ace Hotel Kyoto this April, it was game-over for cheap hotel stays. I can’t do it anymore and I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m happy to join this age-era, whatever that is.

I started my day at a local cafe in town, tucked into what’s sort of like a tiny square where locals come together. (I’m told not to blast the name.) I ordered a cortado and a tortilla. The tortilla is half-cooked, which is exactly to my liking. One thing I think we’ve gotten wrong about Spanish people (and Italians)—well, actually, it’s just a stereotype, and we all know it rarely paints a full picture of a person, culture, or place—is the idea that everyone is pretty laid-back, slow, and they take their time. Although, every time I come to either of these countries, I’m reminded how incredibly fast people move, especially in the service industry. I’m always shocked how fast the coffees come out. I love how quickly I get my coffee here, it’s just such a joy. Japanese girls milking three hours of cafe time; one cup of latte and a slice of cake will never see the light of day here.

That morning, there was only one woman working at the cafe, and she was looking after both the indoor and outdoor tables. She didn’t seem to have to take orders, which probably helped things run more smoothly, but it was still impressive. In Japan, one of my biggest pet peeves at the moment is the imbalance between waitstaff and customers. There are just too many waiters for a small place!

She was fast. She was on it. She was paying attention.

If I order a beer, I want it almost instantly. I don’t care if it’s messy! I don’t care if the froth is spilling over the rim! I don’t care if my coffee cup has a little spill on it! The more spillage, the better! In Japan, this can’t happen because the priority is quality over speed. A little froth oozing over the side of a beer isn’t an issue here, whereas in Japan, customers might make a face or quietly wipe it up themselves. Ultimately, what matters here is that it’s served. I will say, though, people over here take their morning coffee much more seriously. I overheard a man at the coffee bar shouting to another waiter, “Take these espressos to the señor over there while they’re still hot, please!” I love that I get piping hot coffee here. In the morning, time is of the essence.

Here, people order a zurito, which is a smaller beer so you don’t get too full from a full-sized pint. They don’t complicate things by having a separate glass for it. They just use the same pint glass and pour maybe a third of the beer into it. A philosophy I like is don’t overcomplicate things. Just work within the existing system if it already makes sense. This is something Japan is terribly bad at. People will say, “Why didn’t they just get smaller glasses?” without thinking about the new purchases the restaurant would have to make, the extra logistics the staff would have to remember, or the additional dishes to wash.

Each time I come back to this side of the world, I learn something that feels pretty fundamental to life: trust the process. If you pay for something, trust that even though they didn’t get your name and you don’t have one of those buzzer things to notify you that your food is ready, they will either find you or shout your order out loud, and somehow your food or drink will find you. As a matter of fact, the person who took your order remembers what you look like or what you were wearing. They scan the crowd until they find you. You make eye contact, and it’s as easy as that. No misspelled names. No shouting your name across the cafe. Nothing fancy. Just paying attention.

I ordered a cappuccino. I said hola, and after she responded, I placed my order. She then said something to me—I don’t understand Spanish, but she said momento while making a gesture I understood—that she was with another customer. She took her time chatting with him. Usually, if this were day one, I would have felt annoyed that she wasn’t hurrying up. But now, I understand completely. It’s all part of the process, and I’m on board with it.

At Bar Sport, one of the many famous pintxos bars in San Sebastian(and yes, it was pretty good), I overheard an American man talking to his parents. “I don’t know if people are in line or if we’re supposed to line up here to order.” Granted, it’s confusing at first because there are basically no rules. You walk up to a spot at the counter that looks free, make eye contact with someone behind it, and say, “Hola.” If they reply, that’s your in. It’s pretty simple. I figured it out the first day just by watching what everyone else was doing.

Listening to him, it seemed like the lack of a system was frustrating him. He then said, “I can’t do this. I don’t know what’s happening. I’m going to wait outside, so tell me if you can figure it out,” leaving his parents to “deal” with it. It’s a shame he didn’t realize that the lack of a system actually works in our favor as tourists. There are no rules. Everyone is on the same playing field. Language aside, there isn’t an elaborate set of customs you need to understand. On the contrary, we all know Japan is full of these elaborate, often invisible, little rules that can make things difficult for tourists. To me, this is what’s fun about traveling. I love figuring out the non-system system.

Although, with that said. It does pique my curiosity that, in a part of the world where theft is supposedly so common, the terrace dining system is incredibly trusting. What if someone simply leaves without paying? I can easily see myself having one too many vermouths or spritzes and genuinely forgetting to pay. At times, it almost feels too easy to cheat the system. At my favorite tapas place I frequented, the waiter didn’t ask me to pay after I ordered. Later, I went up to a different waiter to order another dish and said, “I still haven’t paid yet,” while holding up my credit card. In Japan, this kind of mix-up is much less likely to happen because we have a system that is air-tight.

There are things that would be considered impolite to some, but here there simply aren’t, like staring or bumping into someone. So far, I’ve noticed that if someone bumps into you, they don’t say “sorry” or “perdón.” They look at you—almost to acknowledge what happened—but they never actually say anything. Somehow, they make you feel like you did something wrong.

An American mom reached over to grab a menu. I flinched a little, but it wasn’t because it bothered me, it just caught me off guard. She immediately said, “I’m so sorry I just reached over you like that.” Too apologetic! More rigor! This Japanese woman named “Manami”—I knew her name because they shouted it when her dish was ready—was the kind of tourist I resent. She didn’t even say hi or hola. She simply looked at the waiter, waved, and held up her phone, probably with a photo of the dish she wanted. He looked at the screen. He seemed a little jaded by the interaction. He smiled, forcefully. Eyes dead, but it worked. He asked, “Just one?” She replied, “Yes!” That was the only word she ever said. More curiosity! Less fear!

I walked out of a bar and noticed someone’s wallet on the ground. I tapped a man on the waist. “Is this yours?” I pointed at the wallet. Then, a group of lads, extremely young looking to be drinking beer, in my opinion, turned around. One of them said, “Simon. Simon.” It was Simon’s. Of course it was. By that point, I was already gone. He didn’t gracias me, only to the guy I tapped on the waist but it’s fine. I feel motherly helping out Simon.

I was getting coffee and breakfast at a touristy cafe, someone next to me ordered an Americano and then asked for milk. The waiter replied in English, “An Americano is espresso and hot water. Now this is a cortado, no?” He was having a laugh, but he had a point. So many things here feel abrasive or just simply too forward from what I’m used to. But more often than not, they usually have a point.

Okay - I hope you’ve been enjoying my week-in-life series!!! See ya back in Tokyo!

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Welcome to Tell Me About Your Week! a monthly-ish series where I ask creatives, writers, and workers of all kinds about a week in their lives in Tokyo. Tell Me About Your Week! will eventually be reserved for paid subscribers, but for the first three installments, I’ll keep it free. Everyone needs a little sample before making any kind of commitment, oh don’t I know.

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Leiya Salis goes by the name The Fickle Writer on social media. If you haven’t met Leiya yet, she is like a lavender field: always smells so nice and a beam of light when you see her. I’m so jealous of Leiya’s ability to remember book quotes at any given time, probably because she has a great habit every writer has. She writes things down in her grandpa-like brown leather notebook, bound by a rubber band-like thing. If you ever get to know her, ask her to show you her notebooks. One woman’s note-taking habits can open up so many wonders.

When I didn’t know her personally yet, I came across her social media once and distinctly remember thinking, “Oh no, she’s so cool.” Her (online) presence was all that I envisioned for myself as a freelance writer: scruffy paperback covers, stacked books all over her desk, a Post-it pinned on her wall, flowers in a makeshift vase, and many notebooks that looked worn in. That was my online observation of her before I met her, but after becoming friends and close collaborators, she is indeed cool.

What does she not do? She’s a writer, screenwriter, actor, model, social practitioner (I love this term when she told me about it), teacher, 1radio show host, does all sorts of event hosting and moderator (including the one I co-organize with her called 2Offline School), and above all, an all-around great listener of your ramblings.

You can check her website, Instagram, and Substack for more.

Okay, enough from me — enjoy x

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Sunday, June 7

A friend invited me to watch a play in Shimokitazawa. The address led to a small theater called Rakuen, Japanese for Paradise. The name seemed fitting: a dimly lit theater tucked ‘neath a 30 year old building that’s likely failed every existing inspection, dust and mite and mold all along the walls, with little to no ventilation. That’s exactly how I’ve imagined heaven.

I was distracted for most of the play. There was a young woman sitting on the other end of the theater who seemed to be experiencing every possible emotion. I was enamored by the sincerity of her presence, the generosity with which she gave her whole self to the consciousness of the play. When the characters mourned, she mourned with them. When they fought, she gripped the edge of her seat, white-knuckled and sweaty. For those two hours, she chose to engage the totality of her existence to the art in front of her.

Afterwards, my friends and I gathered for a debrief at Cafe Stay Happy. It seems they were also moved by the young woman. All of us being artists of some sort, we reflected on the rarity of an earnest audience these days. We’ve all become adept performers, policing our sensibilities so as not to let on that we’re touched by the world around us.

On my way home from the theater, I decided that I’d spend the rest of the day being “uncurated.” This looked like: going to Village Vanguard to buy a key chain I had been eyeing for months; watching a CORTIS music video (and accepting that I enjoy their music); and last but not least, sobbing while re-watching the 2003 Atashinchi film.

Monday, June8

I woke up puffy-eyed from all the crying, but that didn’t matter, because I would be strapped into a Velcro dungaree for a video game motion capture shoot for most of the day. I knew some of the actors on set, so it was an easygoing stretch of work. I pretended to run away from mad scientists and ate free matcha Kit-Kats in between takes.

The shoot wrapped up just as the sun slipped beneath the horizon. The other cast members wandered into an izakaya on a street corner near the station, but I went home because my period had started and I was not keen on being surrounded by spirit bottles and drunk banter.

Instead, I took a detour and swung by a Mexican spot in Sasazuka. Doped up on over-the-counter painkillers, I ordered everything on the menu, and scarfed down the rest on the floor of my living room. My partner wouldn’t have approved, but he’s not here right now, and I’ve got a crimson river pouring out of me. All sins are excused.

Tuesday, June 9

I had my usual day job today, but was an hour late because I decided at 7:56 AM that I wanted freshly cooked rice, natto, grilled mackerel and miso soup. But I burnt it all. By the time I had managed to scrape up what was left in the pot, it was 8:33 and I had missed my train.

So, the day started off with a messy kitchen and a dissatisfied craving, but I had plans in the evening to attend an event in Ginza with a friend. We’d made a pact: there would be no last minute cancellations and we would wear cute little outfits. I sat at the desk daydreaming about the free glasses of wine waiting for me at the venue. I wanted the city to bear witness to my friend’s stunning vintage leather knee high boots, my maroon lace slip dress, our skinny cigarettes and bare-faced tipsy cheeks. Being seen is a great remedy for menstrual woes.

The event was, as expected, mediocre. Everyone there seemed to be looking for work, or a fuck, or both. Since my friend and I are both employed and regularly made love to, we were seeking neither. To make matters worse, we managed to only get a glass of orange wine before the bar closed. Closing the free bar at a press event, 45 minutes before it ends, seemed atrocious.

But being 30 means you don’t waste outfits and you don’t go without food after having a drink. We wandered to Shimbashi Yokocho, found cheap lemon sours and skewers, smoked, and spent 5000 yen. By the time I made it on the last train, I had forgotten entirely about the burnt rice pot waiting in the sink.

Wednesday, June 10

5:30 PM. Hall A of the Tokyo International Forum. Ginza, two nights in a row, which happens rarely. I was there to see Masashi Sada, my grandmother’s favorite folk singer. For an hour each night, my grandmother listens to his music on an old smartphone my mother punted off of Mercari (Japanese e-Bay). When I told her I had a chance to attend his show for work, she gasped like a schoolgirl, and playfully warned me to “not take her man from her.”

The show was unlike anything I had experienced. Sada performed for an astonishing 2.5 hours. He sat twice. Mind you, this man is well into his 70s. And the audience too. They stood when he stood, swayed when he swayed, swung towels in the air in all the right moments. There were tears, laughs, the thunder of applause. There’s something beautiful about witnessing older people enjoy themselves wholeheartedly.

I wonder how many more times he’ll perform. And how many of his long time fans have passed on from Earth. Will I be able to watch his show with my grandmother one day? All these questions swirl in my mind as I go to bed that night, listening to his music, just as my grandmother would.

Thursday, June 11

It seems I’ve completely lost any sense of linear time. I woke up in the morning convinced it was Monday, and panicked that I was late to the motion capture shoot. This happens frequently for me. I lose track of time, mistaking yesterday for a year ago, a year ago for a week ago. Time skips ahead, while my consciousness remains stuck.

I told my 50 year old co-worker about this during lunch later that day. When I explained that I feel overwhelmed with the pace of mortality, that I worry I’m running out of time, she laughed and told me it’ll always be this way. You have to find ways to configure yourself around time, and not the other way round. Besides, you’re young, leave all that thinking for when you’ve grown too old to move about, she said.

Later, over chips and Greek salad at a diner in Nakameguro with a filmmaker friend on sabbatical, a similar conversation unfolded. She wanted to move slower. Her goal for the next three months would be to wrap herself in a blanket of curiosity, shaping her time around the anatomy of her creativity. As she said this, I couldn’t help but think of how beautiful she looked. The way she lit up as she spoke of her plans to swim in a river in Kochi, crack open watermelons, soak in hot springs and read and write and eat well.

I crawled into bed early that night. I hadn’t had a proper sleep in days. As I drifted off, I thought about the conversations from the day. It reminded me of O’Keeffe writing to Anita Pollitzer: “Anita I’m feeling fine and feel as if I’m just having time to get my breath and stand still and look at the world – It is great, sport I am really enjoying it hugely -- … The sky is just dripping today and it seems I have never seen or felt anything more perfectly quiet.”

Slipping into a deep slumber, I promised myself that I’d get my breath and stand still and look at the world tomorrow.

This series is a monthly-ish series. Until next time <3 always comment below and let me know who’s life you would like to see next x

Tell Me About Your Week! will eventually be reserved for paid subscribers, but for the first three installments, I’ll keep it free. Everyone needs a little sample before making any kind of commitment, oh don’t I know.

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I first met …probably at Koen Book Club on a gorgeous fall afternoon. He was a fellow “club kid,” as he put it in his recent article for The Japan Times. I knew of him even though we hadn’t met yet, thanks to some internet stalking or, as I like to call it, research on whomever I want to befriend. I courageously went up to him and asked, “Are you friends with Sam?” (He was, and of course I already knew the answer to that.) Since then, I have been a genuine fan (more like a stan) of Mike.

I’m so happy and honored that Mike said yes to being my first guest on Tell Me About Your Week! Even with the small audience I have on Substack, Mike has continuously liked my posts and commented on them. Writer to writer, I have always felt genuine encouragement from him. I think he’s really good at making people feel like their work is worth it (and good, too) and at being everyone’s beloved cheerleader. He writes for the culture section in The Japan Times, producing beautiful translation work, and is also a published author of MASQUERADE. He seems to be working on his next novel as well! The time he finds! He is such an all-around inspiration, and I’m excited to share his slice of life with everyone.

You can check his website, Instagram, and Substack for a much intimate slice of life.

Enjoy x

Monday, May 25

I’m lucky to have a full-time job that’s entirely remote. I spent most of the day prepping for an appointment I had scheduled for 5:00 p.m.—my first full-on interview in Japanese for a feature story I’m writing. Around 4:00 p.m., I left home to print out a few things at my local 7-Eleven, then headed to Higashi-Nakano.

My photographer colleague met up with me at the station. We popped over to Tokyo’s premier queer bookstore1 (IYKYK) where I interviewed the owner about the trajectory of his business over the years and his views on the current state of queer culture in Japanese society. Keep your eyes peeled for this story in The Japan Times in a few weeks!

I also visited my acupuncturist in Shinjuku Sanchome. I started getting acupuncture a few years ago for some bodily woes, and more recently have been trying to make time to go back regularly to treat my fucked-up sleep (am often stricken by insomnia, even when I take melatonin and/or magnesium). Lately, my acupuncturist has been treating me with both needles and moxibustion, which is a practice that entails burning small pieces of mugwort and applying them to the skin.

On this night, I got some solid sleep for the first time in a long time.

Tuesday, May 26

Just a standard work-from-home day for me, finalizing some film reviews for publication. I had a therapy session in the evening with my London-based therapist. Then attended to other personal and professional needs: a visit to my barber in Asakusabashi (my Argentinian friend introduced me to this salon some years ago), wrangling my novel manuscript, doing some intense edits to a book translation.

I went to bed early because of my errand the next morning.

Wednesday, May 27

Got up sometime around 6:00 a.m. to schlep over to the driver’s license center in Fuchu, west Tokyo, for my 8:00 a.m. appointment. I’ve been trying to convert my New York license since last summer. Some of the rules around foreign license conversion have changed (re: gotten stricter) in the past half year. Suffice to say, I got caught up in the switcheroo for various reasons. I had passed both versions of the written exam, and this morning was my third attempt on the road test, which is a pretty straightforward drive around an enclosed course.

Reader, I failed. For the third time. I’ve been driving for a quarter of a century. I have great confidence in my ability to both drive a car and take a standardized test. Yet a Japanese license still eludes me. I was kind of pissed off about it after my previous failure just weeks earlier. This time around, I wasn’t able to pass for a simple reason that was entirely unmentioned during my previous attempts.

I’m the kind of person who prefers to process difficult or challenging experiences by talking about them to death. Rather than wallow in shame, I spent the rest of the week blabbing to anyone who would listen about how I failed the road test for the third time. The earliest date I could schedule for my next attempt was August.

Since I’d taken a half day off from work already, and it was shortly after 9:00 a.m. when I was informed that I would not be able to receive my license that day, I decided to make the most of the morning instead of going home with my tail between my legs. I ended up dropping by the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art in Ueno for the Andrew Wyeth exhibit. Even though I should have known this already, I was kind of shocked by the crowd of geriatric museumgoers who packed the galleries at this relatively early hour.

Afterward, I went to the local Book Off, where I bought a Takeo Kikuchi dress shirt on sale and a used manga, Taiyo Matsumoto’s Tokyo Higoro. Had a banh mi, chicken salad, and blueberry smoothie for lunch, then went home and took a short nap.

I worked for a few hours in the afternoon before going to the office for a social event. Met up with a friend for yakitori dinner in Takadanobaba in the evening. Had a martini nightcap at a listening bar down the street. It was a long day.

Thursday, May 28

I had coffee with a freelance writer at my local spot near Ichigaya in the morning. Kept busy with work pretty much the entire day. Once things wound down, I went for a jog. I follow a pretty set route of five kilometers in my neighborhood twice a week. Then I went to Roppongi to have dinner with a friend visiting from New York whom I hadn’t seen in a crazy amount of time. We went to a soba restaurant that my husband and I had discovered earlier this year, in the winter, when other friends from the States were in town.

After a hearty dinner, I was planning to bring my friend to a local brewery that has served me well after a movie or museum visit in Roppongi Hills. Sadly, I found that the place has shut down. So we went to another beer spot in the nearby Tokyo Midtown mall instead, nabbing seats outside. A warm and breezy night. Despite my chagrin over the amount of time that had elapsed since I’d last seen this friend, I found it reassuring to pick up where we’d left off and reflect on where life has led us, from our mid-twenties through our thirties, and now into our early forties.

I should mention that this was a rare week in which I basically didn’t cook at all. I usually cook dinner on weeknights when I can manage it, but a combination of social and professional obligations kept me away from the kitchen. It makes me feel somewhat guilty, truth be told, but sometimes these things can’t be helped.

Friday, May 29

Spent the day wrapping up edits on the last of this week’s articles, then shifted gears to a few pieces that are in the works for next week. The news must go on.

I went to my personal trainer later in the day. I usually train two nights a week, but had to cancel one session and reschedule the other this week due to all the things I had on my plate. We usually do a chest day and a back day, but did a bit of both since I only made it in once. The place is about fifteen minutes on foot from my home, and I’ve been going since January 2024. My sessions double as opportunities to shoot the breeze in Japanese with my trainer about weekend plans, recent goings-on, and whatnot. Had to tell him about my road test failure. Ah, well.

My husband and I met up with friends for a late Cantonese dinner in Suidobashi, about a twenty-five-minute walk from our home. The food was great, reminiscent of the Chinese food one finds readily in Manhattan Chinatown—my friend said it reminded him of Wu’s Wonton King, and I’d been thinking the exact same thing. The restaurant was insanely loud, though. Two large groups of salarymen (and a few salarywomen) were screaming at the top of their lungs for almost the entire time we were there. My theory is that some people feel the urge or compulsion to let loose when they find themselves in the relatively nonjudgmental cultural space of a Chinese restaurant in Tokyo.

We bumbled around looking for a place for another drink, and found our way to a delightful second-floor bar just a few blocks east with antiquated wooden furniture, metal light fixtures, and bartending staff who were absolutely and genuinely effervescent—a real rarity. I had a martini and a beer. Afterwards, we walked home and fed our cats a Churu. I took a shower and read for a while—finishing up Jiro Fukushima’s Chō no Katami—then hit the hay for a solid eight hours.

This series is a monthly-ish series. Until next time <3 oh and comment below if you want to peep into anyone’s life in Tokyo you freak!

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Amongst many things that describe me, I’m incredibly sentimental. I wrote an essay way back about hoarding old mementos and calling them my horcruxes (I still stand by this). It’s more than just not being able to throw things away — it’s the possibilities of optical illusion, the endless possibilities of it; what if, one day, this subway ticket from Paris in 2015 could impact me in such a way?

Last year, I inherited some money from my Japanese grandmother, who passed away a few years back. When I took my dad on a trip for his retirement celebration, he passed me a white BMW envelope with my name written — more like scribbled — in HB pencil, and inside it was a bankbook with my name on it that my grandmother had diligently put money into over many years. I was given clear instructions by my dad. He said to withdraw the money immediately and put everything into “WealthNavi,” a fully automated investment app that I have been using since 2022. That way, I’m not “saving” money, but investing and growing it without doing anything. “Putting money in the bank does nothing anymore,” as any father from the ’60s will say.

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It’s been a year since I was handed the envelope with this bankbook, and I have done nothing.

Partially because I freeze when it comes to money stuff. I recently finished reading Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami, and in it she mentions the actions of money exchange— while it’s all about money, the effects it holds are very different. Earning, saving, using, or giving money: we go through different emotions with each of them. I have no issue earning (and using, for that matter) money; in fact, I feel motivated by it. But the idea of managing finances feels cumbersome and is often at the very bottom of my to-do list.

But there’s also another reason, which I only recently realized after doing some spring cleaning and feeling nostalgic. I can’t throw away my fluorescent pink and yellow North Face backpack I bought in Seattle when I was studying abroad, even though the zippers are mostly broken and the bottom of the backpack is sticky for some reason, and whenever I put something in it, it comes out with specks of black dust. It’s not a backpack I identify with aesthetically anymore, but I feel bad throwing it away because it symbolizes a specific time in my life that I feel the need to hold on to. I feel bad in the sense that if I do throw it out, I’m disregarding that part of my life, and I won’t look back on or reflect on that time anymore. My issue — if we are going to call it that — with not being able to throw things away is the fact that when they’re physically gone, there’s no evidence of the past.

There are ample evidence that my life has moved on since then without the daily reminder of this backpack. In fact, I think I’ve done a good job remembering some of the lessons I’ve learned back then without the help of my backpack. (I have spoken to many people about my crazy roommate, and I’ve done that solely based on my memory without my backpack!?) But the decision I have to make — either keep it in the back of my closet and never see it again or throw it out — torments me.

Anyways, back to the money I inherited that I haven’t touched yet. Knowing that my grandmother frequented her local bank on the same street she lived on, merging that money into my account somehow loses the magic of sentimentality. The physical reality of my grandmother touching the money and putting it into the little slot in the ATM machine — yes, yes, I know! Money has been touched by millions of people before her, and probably barely contains any of her DNA at this point! And also, it’s weird to care about this, I know!— makes me wonder why I would ever willingly kill the joys of sentimental value.

The real reason why I can’t throw things away, or why I hold on to things from the past like my memory relies on them, is that I expect these things to one day, in a different circumstance of my life and timezone, change me. The North Face backpack, the BMW envelope with my name scribbled on it by my dad and money (that we know circulates around and it’s not even “hers”)— I fear that if I do interfere with them, then at some point in life, these events never happened.

This reminds me of the phrase “pics or it didn’t happen.” A conundrum that every self-aware person on the internet feels when they want to “log off” during their vacation, but worry people may not believe they ever sipped several Aperol Spritzes and smoked a cheeky cigarette at a piazza in Rome if they don’t post about it.If there’s nothing to show from the past to people in the present — the accolades, the heartbreaks, the thirst-trap pics you used to post on Instagram — did it ever happen?

The fear, the conundrum, to gather the assurance to believe these events happened without anyone else knowing about them — it actually takes a lot of cognitive effort. As a writer, I’m pretty open about what happens to my life but there are still some things I keep to myself to make them live in the version I want to believe in. Taylor Swift’s “Taylor’s Version” is basically about that, right? It was mainly about honoring and reclaiming the lived experiences that were hers to tell.

You know it all happened; you just have to be okay with others not being witnesses to it all the time.

On a much bigger scale, there’s something happening all over Tokyo, especially in Shibuya, that I feel is a great time to practice being certain of the good old days without others validating or backing you up. The Shibuya we see now is nothing like what it was back when I started to frolic around Shibuya circa 2008. Honestly, maybe Shibuya’s identity crisis started right when Center-gai was “renamed” to “Basketball Street” in 2011. Despite the city’s efforts to hang banners that say 1“Basketball Street,” no one actually uses the name, nor should anyone ever say it out loud.

Shibuya is undergoing a “once in a century redevelopment,” also known in Japanese as saikaihatsu (再開発). You turn a corner and there’s either a new building being constructed or an already unrecognizable, generic building standing there. It’s impossible to figure out Shibuya Station now, as they’ve been rebuilding the whole station for years. The taxi stand changes from one exit to another, bus stops switch around like they’re playing damn musical chairs, and nothing — absolutely nothing — about the city feels or looks familiar anymore. I mean, the shock when I saw LOWYA, once an online furniture store, on the corner of Miyamasu-zaka, where there used to be a local Risona Bank — no offense to people who still buy LOWYA furniture — but I guess I didn’t expect a slightly antiquated (sorry, but it had to be said) furniture store to be right there. If the question now is “what is Shibuya’s identity?” there it is: a confused 13-year-old that never felt shame, and it shows.

The first “big” change — or more so, the ending of a building — was when the Tokyu Toyoko Department Store (also known as Tokyu Hyakkaten) closed in 2020 after being in business for 85 years. It was a department store attached to the station, and because it was right in front of Hachiko and the main meeting spots back then, I would go in if I had to wait around for a friend, avoid the rain, or sit in the AC.

Back in the ’80s, the media covered Shibuya’s development as “Seibu vs. Tokyu.” It was just a lighthearted way for the media to cover stories whenever there was a new building by Seibu Holdings or Tokyu Corporation, two conglomerates that created the culture, fashion, and narrative of how Shibuya was portrayed. As much as I want to advocate for the ‘good old days,’ even back then, a city was always defined by corporate companies with money, and they were the ones painting a picture of how a city was meant to breathe.

It was only a matter of time before the rest followed suit after the Toyoko department store. In 2023, Tokyu Department Store closed after 55 years in business (now redeveloped as The Shibuya Upper West Project gag). More recently, it was announced that Seibu Shibuya is closing this September, and lo and behold, just this week, Tokyu Hands — packed with knickknacks and very specific stuff — announced its closing this November as well. Like where the fuck am I supposed to get a cardboard cake box in a particular size that fits pound cakes for 2crafty?No one quite knows what’s going to be built after them, but will they have the balls to build another formulaic shopping mall, or worse, a Zara? Time will only tell.

The news of Tokyu Hands going under stirred a lot of emotions online, and when the news broke, my timeline was filled with grieving commentary too. Sam told me a story about how, whenever he used to visit Japan, Tokyu Hands was one of the places he couldn’t wait to visit again the next time he was there. I have a few restaurants that I feel that way about — places I can’t wait to go back to and brings certain memories back — but for a building to hold that kind of sentimental value is rare, and those buildings are slowly disappearing in the name of "sustainability," “accessibility,” and “innovation”??? Tokyu Hands, as one writer put it, “was a space that embodied the consumer culture of the Shōwa and Heisei era.” It represented a specific time, and the public’s reaction was, in a way, a bereavement of that time.

There are some endings that I wish would come sooner, like this little rat dog that starts barking at 6 a.m. in the park in front of my house and keeps going until 8 a.m. When the barking or more like the yapping stops, I’m relieved. When I’m at Disneyland, waiting in line for a ride and it’s finally my turn next, you just know that it was all worth it. That painstaking lining up I just did was worth it.

There’s no return per se for tearing down old buildings that have been symbols of a certain time. There’s no relief, no gratification, no reward — it’s just gone, and we are left with what? An easy-to-describe building: silver, tall, floors stacked onto each other, green shit coming out of the sides (I mean plants) — with nothing different to offer from the rest. The buildings become placeholders for now, and there will be a new bubble tea place or some kind of fake neon-lit izakaya that will fold in a few months. All that matters is filling these 3“airspaces” with more “airspaces.”

Shibuya, as it is now, seems to function as a town meant purely for commercial purposes, and it’s no longer curated by the people who live in the neighborhood. It’s understandable that the people who live here — the tax payers—are frustrated that every shop and building seems to cater to tourists.

As emotional as this news was, there is also the business side of department stores and how, unfortunately, they just don’t reflect our current consumer behavior anymore. If you’ve ever been to Tokyu Hands, you can really tell that they are trying to get customers to linger on each floor by setting up cute little corners that might attract their interests — whether it’s a character-themed thermos and cookware section or masking tape and stationery. The longer we linger, the more likely we are to make additional purchases.

Tokyu Hands’s tagline for a while was “ぐるぐる巡ってワクワク広がる,” loosely translated as “wander around and get excited.” From what I’ve researched, it seems like it’s become more and more financially difficult over the years for department stores and multi-complex buildings like these to survive in the city. The grueling economy never gets better, rent soars relentlessly, and they need a big space to hold so much inventory. (Post-online shopping, having everything in one place is no longer a radical concept either) All while they still have to pay employees fair wages.

I hate seeing a city change, especially when there was once so much teenage angst and desire filling those spaces. At the risk of sounding extremely like my age or older, why does a city have to change? Perhaps the real question is : who is the change for? Everything feels so fleeting, like I have to wonder every time I walk past a building: is this the last time I will ever see it? When I first went to Shibuya 109, the epicenter of girlhood, I was with some friends to take purikura. I also went there with my mom once to beg her to buy me a pair of jeans from Angel Blue. I came out of the fitting room, and my mom said, “Oh honey, I think they’re just too tight on you,” and instead she took me to Gap as a consolation for my foreign-built body.

The gas station on the corner of Ikejiri-Ōhashi Station is gone, and architects were standing around with tape measures, plotting their next move. How am I going to explain to taxi drivers in the future to turn left at “the gas station”? The house on the corner of my block is completely demolished, though they left the concrete entrance, and the partial disappearance of it all somehow makes it even sadder. All the clubs in Shibuya we used to go to on dogenzaka are gone and now it’s just another building for hotels, offices and more shops. Our local Chinese spot in Yūtenji is gone too — poof, without much notice. All the while, a brand-new dimly lit, terracotta-walled Asian fusion restaurant that serves lemongrass sour and coriander moscow mule opens right across from it. I was walking along my usual path to the station, and there was a lot that had completely become a construction site. The sad thing is, I don’t even recall what was there before.

It’s just incredibly crazy to think that one day when I look at my camera roll and see a photo taken around Tokyu Hands, and I’m like oh there used to be a Hands there. But it’s okay. Whether it’s in a photo or based on a loose memory after drinking five Red Bull vodkas — the memories are there, and you know, we know, I know that there used to be a place for toilet emergencies and we’ll do our best to protect and preserve the nostalgia.

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Things that I think you’d like too

• incredibly floored by Tony Tulathimutte’s writing. This N+1 piece called “the feminist” is one of the best short stories I’ve ever read. I’m really enjoying his book Rejection as well.

• I’ve been doing so much research for my upcoming trip to London. This guide by is great and I loved this East London guide by for . Also ‘s guide is extensive as well.

• I came across Kyle Chayka’s “Your Friendly Neighborhood Newsletter” article on The New Yorker and it was so delightful. YES to more hyper specific local newsletters!

• Then I found by and it’s so thoughtfully curated that I have so many questions : like how long does it take to make one post? It’s an incredible resource for those traveling to London soon that’s not a generic AI listicle.

• I loved this Towpath article - and I can’t wait to go for a little breakfast or lunch!

• That whole conversation about Olga Tokarczuk allegedly using AI….and her coming out with an official statement to clear the air. Writing a whole book on AI is not writing, but using it in the name of research? like how is that different from our usual google search? She said in an interview this : “—I asked this advanced model what kind of songs my protagonists would be listening to at a dance, a few dozen years ago, and AI gave me a few titles.”

• Then this Granta AI story ? I would love to write for Granta one day… but I do wonder the responsibilities as a publications to check if it’s AI written as oppose to just ‘trust’ the writer.

• This Coco Mellors story on solitude in London. I just truly can’t wait to have my eat and writing in London days. I’m so excited, like what the hell.

• ‘s 40 things i want to do after forty.

• This interview with . I never actually knew Ella but omg - her recipes. Also going to her event at Waterstones on the 24th!

• pieces on motherhood is everywhere I feel. I wonder if it’s the age-range that i’m in, but so many! this piece by announcing her second pregnancy is so tender.

• Lalabooks is a London based independent book store and I’m going to the Polly Barton event on her new book, What am I, a dear?

• oh btw! Tokyo is going to have its first ever indie English book store! Like pretty exciting?? FeatherHeartbook has reached its fundraising goal!

• I have been watching a lot of movies actually. My review on Devil Wears Prada 2 as seen on my IG (i was told this format is unhinged but I think it’s cool) On theme, Sentimental Value was incredible!! Renate Reinsv is such a great actor. I love the randomness of Elle Fanning in it. I watched Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture for the first time and it was just so good? to think that she wrote tha when she was like fresh out of college is crazy. did you know that you can watch the whole movie on Youtube? Probably not the best way to support artists but alas.

  

okay cool beans — talk to you soon!

So! I’m doing a weekly workshop now hosted by Lily Dancyger. I’m learning about what is a braided essay. I will admit, I never heard of it before, and it’s so fun, I’m obsessed. It’s a creative practice —practice in a true sense—and it explores some personal narrative ‘threads’ that could potentially draw an unexpected thread along. I’m currently writing a different story for my assignment, but this was a practice one x Also, wanting to pitch a full story on this somewhere so consider this an ‘excerpt.’

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A mirepoix is a French term describing a combination of onions, carrots, and celery as the base flavor for many dishes.

***

It has somehow become my annual tradition to go to Kyoto in mid-April. Last year, around this time, I was in Kyoto with Sam after helping out with a shoot for Dior. It’s when I wrote this piece and was overwhelmed, almost dumbfounded by the number of tourists. As Maggie James, interviewed on The Intelligencer said, “—it looks like Disneyland.”

Regardless of the conundrums and distress of overtourism in Kyoto, I still love it. I adore it so much that every time I decide to go there, I think it was the best decision I’ve ever made. I tried to really think about the why on this trip—why I love Kyoto so much. It could be because I know a lot more about Kyoto now than the average tourist, and that makes me feel “like a local.” Often, in traveling, “to feel like a local” means knowing the authentic places to go and not getting trapped in overpriced tourist destinations. I already have an advantage in this because I know what’s true to Japan and to Kyoto, and understanding the language is a bonus as well. At least for me, “to feel like a local” in any city where I’m not from means feeling like I’m part of something I can’t quite define. But I know deep down that it means a tremendous amount to me to be accepted and treated like one of them.

It’s like when I’m in Paris, dressed and acting like a Parisian woman, and someone asks me at a bus stop if the bus goes to a certain destination. I can’t answer, partly because of the language barrier, but also because I’m not a local. I don’t mind not being able to answer—in fact, I’m almost proud just to have been asked. Feeling like a local matters to me only as a feeling, nothing more substantial than that.

Or maybe the reason I love Kyoto so much is simply because staying at the Ace Hotel is a great experience, and that’s that.

With everything being said about Kyoto’s overtourism and how locals feel about the influx of foreigners, I find myself in on an inside joke—one that lets me feel like I’m one of them. In my head, in a hubris tone, I would shout to the annoyed local passersby: I share your frustration! I understand your language! As if that makes me deserving of being here.

I’m not from this city, and I don’t speak the local dialect, but I place myself on Kyoto’s side of the Venn diagram—or at least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself.

***

I first heard the word mirepoix from recipe developer and food influencer Molly Baz. (I never know how to describe these people without making their job sound less serious.) I love her recipes, and the Peanutty Pork Noods with Crunchy Celery (alas, the name feels a bit ad nauseam) is Sam’s and my favorite comfort meal at home. Until I cooked this dish, I never thought that celery could act as the main character rather than just a base of flavor.

She mentions in this video that with her peanutty noodles, “celery acts as an asset and not just a base of flavor.” You don’t actually cook down or saute the celery in this dish; you just toss it in at the very end and let the heat from the noodles cook it down a bit. It keeps the crunch of the celery and its robust flavor as is. If you don’t like celery, this dish is not for you, so don’t make it—but if you do, you’ll be like, ah, this is a great way to actually taste the celery.

***

I went into a teashop called Horaido. It stands in the same spot where it started back in the Edo period, almost 222 years ago. Now, it’s on the same street as Urban Research, Levi’s, and other popular vintage shops nearby. Of course, with “the matcha fuss” (抹茶騒動), as their website indicates, the shop is a local favorite as much as it is for foreigners who have watched a TikTok or two.

I was greeted in English, as all five customers there were foreigners. Three people were working there; two women who were incredibly quick moving, fluent in English discussing tea types with tourists. Nothing seems to have changed inside the shop for centuries and there are big barrels filled with prepackaged tea bags. An old man approached me across the counter. He was wearing a mustard color samue (作務衣), a work clothing that is less formal than a kimono. His hair looked soft and fluffy, unabashedly grey and white. He greeted me in English and I quickly said konnichiwa to cue him in that he can speak Japanese with me.

Then, moments after, I realized that this was a silly tactic on my part. Almost any tourist, any foreigner, can say two things in Japanese: konnichiwa and arigato. To him, I was just one of the statistics—a foreign-looking woman (wearing my Nike yoga pants wasn’t helping my case) entering a tea shop to buy some matcha and an assortment of teas. And it turns out, I was doing exactly that.

Our exchange was far more tedious than it needed to be, and I could feel his confusion. I wasn’t a subtle mirepoix that made sense to the equation. I looked too foreign, but I was also too good at speaking Japanese for him. Suddenly, I didn’t fit this man’s data point, and I was disrupting a well-established system they had. I could see him playing gymnastics in his head. Erhhh, Agghhh. Hmmmm. I could hear all of the movements.

In a fleeting moment, it made me uncomfortable, even embarrassed that I was causing him confusion. It’s like they didn’t know how to play nice, friendly, customer service with me. I didn’t want to be an unsolvable problem. I wanted to make sense. I wanted him to see that I made sense.

***

I love shungiku (春菊). I googled what shungiku is in English and couldn’t get any seemingly correct translation for it. It’s a bitter leafy vegetable I guess! Shungiku is a classic ingredient in Japanese households; it’s in almost every hot pot meal during the winter. I had never actually had shungiku outside of hot pot. On its own, it’s quite tough and bitter. If you just saute it or eat it as a salad, it can be a bit overpowering for some. I recently went to Parklet for lunch, and they served their side salads with shungiku and some leafy greens with a vinaigrette dressing. It was incredible—the right kind of tangy and soft bitterness, a flavor combination that I didn’t have to guess around but made sense. It was an instant aha moment.

***

Why is this lady speaking to me in Japanese? What did she say she wanted? What is she looking for? Why is she here?

Questions I rarely ask myself, but that other Japanese people persistently remind me of.

***

I asked for three things at the tea shop: matcha for my house, bancha for our landlord, and some hojicha for myself. They had a bilingual booklet that explained each tea’s features, pricing, flavor profile, and very intricate details on which type of tea is best for you depending on how you take your tea. His seasoned, rugged fingertips flipped through the booklet that I’m sure he explains to people 250 times a day.

He then said something to me that took us both to a much more comfortable place—an agreement we could both be on the same page about and move along without any further confusion.

As he flipped through some pages with me, and before he asked me what sort of tea I like, he huffed, not necessary at me (I hope) but to himself. “Okay,” he said as if to confirm a minor detail coming ahead. “Should I go through this in English or Japanese?”

It was a judgment call on his end to smooth things over with me. It was a way to discern what I was—and frankly, I appreciated the candor, but then I felt my hunched back straighten. If I chose to say, “In Japanese, please,” I knew that I had to “lock in,” to use the parlance of our time. It meant that after this, I had to answer his questions in perfect Japanese and agree and nod in a way that read as Japanese. The stakes were high for my dignity, my identity and everything that I built for myself for the past thirty-three years.

We proceeded in Japanese.

***

My favorite home cook, Alison Roman, once said something about raw chickpeas that I absolutely—sorry, I have to say it—clocked it for me. “I have a bee in my bonnet about raw chickpeas.” She said this in one of her videos, where she was showing us how to make a frizzled chickpea salad.

Raw chickpeas in a salad are not that great, and now, knowing that other people think this too, I feel comfortable admitting it. They’re mushy, and the texture has always thrown me off. Any sort of bean in your salad should be, in my opinion and in Roman’s, cooked.

Ever since discovering that chickpeas’ deliciousness only grows when cooked, I always cook them in a lot of fat. When certain foods—although, understanding that food likability is subjective—make more sense cooked in a different way than you thought was “normal,” it feels like I’ve discovered a secret that I must tell everyone. I love it when food does that. I don’t know why french fries and a milkshake is the best combo, but it is and it just makes sense.

***

After we established a common language and, dare I say, an understanding of identity, everything was fine between us until he asked me how I take my matcha. He asked, “Do you enjoy it at home, whisking it?” I almost lied, but I didn’t. It felt silly to feel like my identity is being threatened by a man I don’t even know at a teashop. No offense, but this isn’t how I want my identity to be challenged.

I was embarrassed and muffled underneath my coat collar. “Oh no… I put some milk in my matcha.” Then he quickly responded, “In that case, you don’t need something more expensive than this tier and above. These three will do.”

I appreciated that he didn’t try to upsell me, as I was clearly clueless, but his tone and matter-of-factness made it feel like I was being punished for putting milk in my matcha. I felt like a child who knows nothing—a child that puts milk in her things to make it more drinkable and comforting. He was poking holes into my airtight instruction manual of who I am.

***

Jenny Holzer, a visual artist who began her career as a street artist in New York, created Inflammatory Essays, a work I often return to when thinking about how we create meaning out of something.

Even as a novice in art, I’m drawn to it. At its core, it feels like it’s an exercise in choice: an exploration to consciously decide how to interpret and assign meaning.

Originally commercially printed and pasted across city streets, the essays are now displayed in museums as a large grid-like installation. Each sheet, printed in lithograph on colored paper, contains twenty lines and one hundred words.

It feels like a format that’s hard to jump into right away. Where do you begin? Some might start with a certain color; others might read from wherever their eyes land within the grid. Who knows if there are common themes based on the color of paper or structure. Whether the placements are deliberate or not, figuring out the themes can take hours, days, even years.

The question is, how, then, do we engage with these texts? What choices must we make to begin understanding them?

***

“Ookini(おおきに),” he said after I purchased all three teas I had asked for. I replied back in the same dialect, trying to mimic the right tone and all. “Ookini.”

It’s not a word I would ever use, but it felt nice to use it after the back and forth with him. We made it! We made it to the weird, awkward finish line.

I wondered if I made sense to him. Not in terms of language or proficiency, but in something much more hard to pin down. Did me, Megumi, made sense to him as a being, as part of a social structure?

I guess I’ll have to sit with not knowing, ever.

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Things that I think you’d like too

The roundups are random as I made this list in March and didn’t update until just now.

• I have my thoughts on Emily Gould’s ideas … but Old Young Person is a very ah-ha term that sat right with me.

• I wish I can write something as clever like this ? Your taste should be private on by New obsession : Errands show . There’s a Japanese version of this, in which the main theme is to feature children’s first errands called Old Enough! But adults errands are so much more fun to watch and relatable, because life is incredibly normal sometimes.

• An absolutely astute piece on the viral AI essay that went around. A response piece by #256: The “world” according to AI pushers. There’s a certain tone these CEO’s have when it comes to ‘defending’ AI and their world that they deem to think is “right” — it feels so empty.

• This piece written by Lily It comes in Waves for Longreads is an incredibly reflective piece on her cousin that was murdered.

• She also wrote on Brevity what is a braided essay — a short 500 words or so essay; short and sweet.

• on , did an interview with Sophia Smith Galer. I never knew of Galer before but now I’m hooked on her podcast Word for Word with Sophia . Living in Japan as a bilingual/bicultural, it’s still a ‘rare’ group of community of us and it’s incredibly cool to hear others who are managing so many languages.

• Say what you have to say about Lena Dunham but my god she’s a great writer. How I became a filmmaker on the New Yorker as an excerpt from her new book and it’s just so well written, lyrical even! I can’t wait to get Famesick in my hands. Loved ‘s review on it too, is famesick a burnout memoir?

• on wrote such an incredible piece on motherhood. The contradictions of it all!!

TV

• I’ve watched the new season of Beef and actually loved it? I love a good and light show that gives me the chuckles. An unhinged group of people they are.

• I also watched Jury Duty presents : company retreat . I loved it. Great as always, and again, how the fuck are they able to pull it off?

Misc report

• If you are looking for a cute souvenir for your next Kyoto trip, Toshoan is so cute and delicious. It’s made out of Shiro-an, white bean paste and no eggs or flour.

• Justine Snacks did it again! I’ve been traveling so much so I’m back on my home cheffing series. This roasted carrot soup is so yummy (anything coconut milk is great really), and this cheesy scallion pancake is …amazing.

• This body lotion that was in my room at Ace Hotel. The smell is addictive.

• Paso Jewelry specifically the one I linked. I’m always asked for some Japanese jewelry brands, and found this one recently that pretty sick.

Okay, that’s it from me. See ya soon :) x

I finished Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, and I’ve been feeling more exuberant than usual. I feel like I’ve been opened up with a new understanding of “personhood,” if that makes sense. I was going to say friendship or relationships, but that feels too easy to pin down. Lately, I’ve been particularly observant to anything that speaks about the concept of community — or, more broadly, about being. It could be because our second volume of Offline School focused on community building, so it’s been top of mind.

I loved how Zevin explored all aspects of what it means to simply live and experience life: the happy things, the sad things, loneliness, friendships, romance, hobbies, passion, work, the desire to do better — even the embarrassing parts of earnestness, just to name a few. While she mentions that the book is, at its core, about “work,” the throughline of every relationship we encounter — both friendships and working relationships — is love. It is subtle, but without love, there are no friendships. Without love, no games were made. Without love, there is no working relationship. Without love, there is no “collaborator in life.”

A funny thing happened, though. I loved this book because the protagonists, Sam and Sadie, immediately felt aspirational to me. Their dynamic was something I hadn’t been familiar with when I was younger. I didn’t know a kind of love that could exist between two people of the opposite sex — a man and a woman — rooted in trust, intellectual connection, and something greater than themselves, without being sexual. It was a subtle, but grandeur life well depicted.

The book felt like it was about romance, yet not about romance at all — at least not in the traditional sense. I also really loved how their reflection on creativity felt sincere. The book largely takes place in a time before smartphones, when people are all consuming in the best possible way. As a side note, I loved how the book touched on this when Sadie and Sam were reflecting on their “success,” (”We had so much freedom — creatively, technically. No one was watching us, and we weren’t even watching ourselves.”) — a nod to our current culture being all consuming in all the wrong ways.

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There’s a quote I often come back to from one of Dolly Alderton’s old podcast archives. She and her guest were fervently discussing romantic relationships when the guest said, “Oh, I don’t remember where I heard this, but there’s a quote: put more friendship in your romance and more romance in your friendships.”

This stuck with me because I was completely unfamiliar with the idea when I was single — especially the part about “more friendship in romance.” It almost made me uncomfortable, in the same way I feel when I go to a party alone knowing only one person there: the creeping anxiety. It’s the same psyche, in a sense — knowing something will make me uncomfortable, and realizing I have to do the work not to let that feeling take over.

There are, of course, ways to make that experience more enjoyable right? I could introduce myself to the person standing next to me (crazy!), or ask the one friend I know, hey can you introduce me to people? (also crazy!). I know, logically, that the outcome is always better when I put in that effort. The truth is, it’s cumbersome to put that kind of effort in — to really get to know someone — when sex is so much easier. I didn’t really like most of the men unless we were in bed together. With many of them, I didn’t even enjoy spending time outside of that. As horrifying as it sounds, just walking down the street with a certain guy sometimes felt embarrassing.

This isn’t a character assassination — I’m sure they had their own thoughts about me — but I just didn’t like their personalities. They weren’t the kind of people I would have chosen as friends, yet they were people I chose to sleep with. How strange is that?

Deep down, I knew I could have made my dating experiences more enjoyable — dare I say, more meaningful if I put the effort in; the bare minimum to get to know someone without sex. I just wasn’t willing to put in that kind of work I guess.

I had a friend who was living in Japan at the time, and she was so cool and confident that her attitude toward life felt infectious. She was sleeping with this hot, very tall, athletic, proactive man. It seemed like a healthy sex life. I should know, because when we were at her house, we found a condom wrapper behind the stereo where she played her CDs (yes, I told you, tasteful), and we all had a big laugh about it. She is full of life, so sure of herself, and unapologetic. In other words, there was a lot I could learn from her.

She had a lot of friends, including men she’d gone on Bumble dates with. I found this appalling. I couldn’t imagine being friends with men I’d had unsuccessful dates with, arriving at some mutual understanding of “we can still be friends though,” inviting them into my home, and then having them become friends with my friends too. It was a formula I didn’t follow and didn’t even recognize as possible.

I once wrote about how I thought of love, or boyfriends, as tokens — a kind of binary thinking where love could either become a failure or a success. Any first date I went on felt like a form of speed dating; I was quick to evaluate men through a system I had created for myself, one that made sense to me at the time.

I may have mentioned this before, but I kept a black notebook — literally black in color, though not quite a blacklist — where I recorded the men I went on a date with. Their names (no emails or phone numbers, though that would have been chic), birthdays, nationalities, religions if any, physical features, conversations that stayed with me, the kiss if any, the sex if any. The only love that I knew was how it looked. It was never nuanced or based on trust— it was how it presented in front of me.

I’ve nagged about my dating life here many times, but if I could turn back time, I would have approached it differently. I withheld trust with men. I didn’t do this in my friendships with women, but somehow I drew a clear line between the two. With Sam and Sadie, their relationship was never binary or fueled by judgment. I had only ever known one way of looking at a man, and one way of understanding love. Once I turned everything into a romantic “thing,” it all turned to shit. I didn’t understand it at the time. As a magical thinker, I believed romance was the panacea to all of life’s troubles. But in reality, romance was more like a getaway car (cue Taylor Swift singing, “nothing good starts in a getaway car”) — an escape toward an easier path. Romantic love, perhaps, was too easy.

We once lived in villages, building trust through acts of service: warning each other about approaching storms so crops could be harvested early, or caring for one another’s children when someone couldn’t. At its core, human relationship is about mutual support and dependence. Philosophically, romantic love and sex matter, too. I’m a firm believer that where there is life, there should be love.

But Zevin’s writing offered me a new understanding of what a man and a woman are capable : the possibilities outside the confines of romantic love. The two were unwilling to jeopardize their friendship and working relationship over something as ‘common’ as romantic love.

I think what Zevin did — and what felt especially fortifying to the friendship narrative — was to keep the relationship as platonic as possible. There were clearly moments when Sam seemed to want more, but she never fully explored that possibility. The story always remained true to its core: this is about work. (As Zevin also mentions in the acknowledgements.) That work could refer to the effort they put into creating their games, but also the work they did on their individual growth, which ultimately reflected their growth as friends. (This is maybe an indulgent interpretation but that’s how I feel.)

The word platonic is derived from the Greek philosopher Plato — student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle. (Shoutout.) Today, platonic love is understood as love without romantic or sexual attraction, a simplified version of what Plato originally described. For Plato, platonic love was less about the absence of desire and more about transforming sexual desire into a pursuit of spiritual beauty, wisdom, and truth. This idea later became known as the “ladder of love.”

I probably understand platonic love through its modern definition, but I’ve always felt a kind of jealousy toward women and men who are able to maintain nonsexual relationships that seem deeply rooted in trust. Phoebe and Joey from Friends are great examples of this. There’s a funny moment when Joey mistakes Phoebe for her twin sister Ursula and kisses her — but nothing ever develops between them. They remain friends, and in fact, even the sweetest moment turns into sort of a silly thing. A really endearing scene from the two opposite sex.

Those characters worked so well because their connection is grounded in humor and personality, and that promise is never broken. In a way, it echoes what Plato originally imagined love to be about: transcending into something larger.

This promise or trust is explained in the book early on by Zevin. Sadie was asked if she would hang out with Sam at the hospital again so Sam has someone to speak to at his own age and she contemplates this. “[...]to play with another person is no small risk.” Play here has a double meaning — both to play games with and play as a general sense. This “risk” is described by Zevin, “it means to allow(ing) yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt.” She gives an example of a dog rolling on its back to humans;“I know you won’t hurt me — even though you can.” Zevin then concludes that “to play is to love and trust.”

I loved this part so much, especially how it foreshadows the depth of their friendship. When I really think about it, like really think about it, I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a relationship that sustained the kind of love and trust that Sadie and Sam worked toward. They were intertwined as business partners, colleagues, and friends. While each of those dynamics may require something different, there was always trust and love between them — values that profoundly exist beyond what romantic love often settles into.

And then there it was. My favorite part of the book: when Sadie answers Sam’s question about why they were never really together. “Lovers are… common,” she says. “[...] because true collaborators in life are rare.”

As a firm believer in romance, being told that “lovers are common” doesn’t sit well with me. And yet, I deeply respect the idea. It almost feels illuminating — the realization that perhaps true love, the kind Plato originally described, is something we must first find within ourselves, even when we are in the most intellectually or emotionally fulfilling romantic relationship.

And what feels most edifying is the understanding that you can arrive there on your own, but if you’re lucky, you may experience it alongside a true collaborator in life.

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some links to share this week!

Reading

• Generation Why? by Zadie Smith for the New York Times Review. I can’t believe she wrote this in 2010… how much it holds is crazy (also her predictions are right on the dot!), but a great read on what’s being human in a “techy” world.

• by Lena Dunham on a jobby: It’s not your job and it’s not your hobby!

• A profound read by Andrea Long Chu On liking women for N+1. It’s for anyone interested in critiquing.

• There’s never a week I don’t recommend but her recent column — nailed it again! Do you feel “chosen” by your friends?

• By You’re shaped by what you pay attention to It’s such a great read I found through Wild Geese.

The word religion comes from Latin relegere, which means to “go over again”, to “carefully observe”. Religion, in its purest sense, is not about dogma, rites, monasticism, or indoctrination; it’s about attention.

• A Sense of Agency: A Conversation with Lauren Oyler on The Paris Review by Sheila Heti. The photo says it all for the lit girls. Oyler’s book, No judgement feels like an essay collection I need to read.

Books:

• Also finished reading Tokyo Sympathy Tower by Rie Qyudan . I actually want to get my hands on the English version translated by Jesse Kirkwood. This book incredible by the way.

• I’m currently reading Reading Lolita in Tehran (it’s taking me a bit time to warm up to this) , and The world according to Garp. The cover I got is phenomenal.

Listens :

• the critics and her publics is so good! A listened to the Andrea Long Chu episode and learned a few basic things on criticism. (Cue to Immanuel Kant)

• I somehow landed on a Zadie Smith week — and missed this Adam Buxton episode with her. As usual, aside from being smart, I love how she’s funny without trying.

Misc :

• My decade long friend Yuri has officially? launched her air bnb! Nell’s house is nice house in Tokyo, a cozy stay and the host will guarantee you a money well spent stay. (I don’t know what the booking system looks like for now, but shoot her a DM if you need a house to stay in for your next trip in Tokyo)

• by is always such a good place to read yap but also a good amount of criticism re; fashion industry and politics. But aside from that, she’s just soooo fun to follow on IG and she’s like one of those people : can we be friends please!

Okay that’s it from me. I’ve been eating out five days straight now. Gonna go eat some homemade soup right quick. xx Megumi

Until recently, Meredith Hayden, also known as @Wishbonekitchen, was in Japan. I don’t actually follow her, but because I (hate) watch these influencers’ J-content — the algorithm thought I should have a sniff. Oh, and did I sniff; like a koi fish ready to chomp on anything presented in front of it. After I finished watching her full 1’37second video that began with “as a chef, I’ve been dying to take a trip to Japan,” I was along for the ride for the rest of the week. The algorithm and I both knew I would see the things I’ve seen many, many times, and I would gleefully take it.

I was trying to find something to be enraged about or to disapprove of in her izakaya or food choices. I quickly felt myself getting ready to criticize this poor woman. None of it is her fault that I’m this angry. She didn’t tag any of the restaurants she went to and gatekept most of where she went, and no one in her comment section was asking, “where is slide 4?” It seemed like she also knew people were on her page just enjoying the eye-candy J-content — that ichigo parfait, or udon, or whatever pink and soupy-looking thing. Her posts were nothing novel, or unique for that matter. I think she embraced this too; she wasn’t posting to give recs or to drive something sensationally new, but to present vibes, which ultimately makes her posts inherently basic.

In Filterworld, a book by Kyle Chayka, he mentions this phenomenon as such: “In Filterworld, uniqueness is an ephemeral product that gets seized on by algorithmic recommendations, recommended more and more until whatever was unique or special about it is either ruined or becomes cliché.” This explains my shrug when I order famichiki now; it’s always been the midday snack that gave me a pep in my step, but now it just feels like I’m buying into the trope of the 1famichiki sando. (Eyeroll every time I see the word“sando”) Additionally, since I look foreign in Japan, I just look like any other tourist trying the “viral” fried chicken; ostensibly a basic person, assimilating myself into that sameness turns me into one of them.

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“Nihon wa nagai desu ka?” asked the Indian man working at the restaurant where I had just had lunch, as I was paying at the register.

I said, “Oh, nihonjin desu. Zutto Nihon ni sunde masu.”

He was surprised because I had been speaking in English with a friend, but then spoke fluent Japanese — just like him.

“Ah, soudeshita ka,” he said, leaving a little space before his next sentence. He was still unsure that I was fully Japanese.

I read between that silent moment and said, “Ah, ato,” as if it were an afterthought I had just remembered: “Okasan wa America-jin de, otosan wa Nihon-jin nanode,”

He looked relieved. His assumptions were correct.

“Ah, yappari ne!!” I knew it! He said — so enthusiastic, so delighted.

“Boku wa Indo kara desu kedo, zutto Nihon ni sunde masu. Nanode, eigo wa sonnani jōzu janai. haha”

He explained that he had lived in Japan his whole life and that’s why he can’t speak much English. He was in his 30s. As I got my change back, he ended our brief conversation with, “Mata kite kudasai ne! Arigatou gozaimasu!” working diligently and excitedly just like any other worker in this country.

While I was exiting the restaurant, I bowed and said arigatō gozaimasu. He bowed and said the same again. How beautiful is it that we both speak eloquent and polite Japanese? —just like they want us to. How profound is it that we both speak the body language of an old Japanese soul? —just like they taught us too . How beautiful is it that we are so similar and dissimilar at the same time but Japan is our common denominator — this they could never imagine.

This sort of exchange is proliferating every day in Tokyo. I see a Southeast Asian person working as the conbini manager alongside the older workers there, leading not only the staff but also teaching kids how to operate the register as a part of a job shadowing program from their school.

The whiplash of being caught between two languages, cultures, and identities is happening everywhere in Japan now, more than you can imagine. Take it from me — it’s exhausting. It’s happening right now at some conbini where you just bought your egg sando, and it’s happening at that katsu restaurant you went to. The lived experience in Japan — whether Japanese or non-Japanese — is beyond what you can grapple with during the “very Japanese time” you’re having now, and it feels especially tedious to watch at the moment.

I came across this meme that was going around at the end of 2025: “You met me at a very Chinese time of my life.” I read an article on Wired titled “Why Everyone Is Suddenly in a ‘Very Chinese Time’ in Their Lives.” This piece explores how there has been a “vibe shift” online over the course of a few years — that “despite all of the tariffs, export controls, and anti-China rhetoric, many people in the United States, especially younger generations, have fallen in love with Chinese technology, Chinese brands, Chinese cities, and are overall consuming more Chinese-made products than ever before.” Notably, consumable things. TikTokers like Chao Ban has said, “It has occurred to me that a lot of you guys have not come to terms with your newfound Chinese identity.”

There were so many 2good think pieces based on this trend, and one that I really enjoyed was by written by titled “My Year of Rest and Chinesemaxxing.” Chinesemaxxing is also TikTok language in which you’re doing something to the max, and it means that people — often white people — are incorporating Chinese elements into their lives, like smoking cigarettes, eating hot pot, or both at the same time, (lol) or rolling up a T-shirt with their belly out like a Chinese uncle. Tran mentions that if this were 10 years ago, it would have been called “cultural appropriation.” These trends are not meant to look down on or punch down at Chinese culture or its people, but are framed as motivational — one in which “(Orientalism) is not a patronizing one, but an aspirational one.”

Tran draws astute observations about why the world suddenly wanted to go “Chinese mode,” noting that the geopolitics between China and America cannot be ignored, and that maybe Americans are now looking at their deeply distrusted and dysfunctional government and have decided to look elsewhere for solutions. But, but, but… the piece also implies: are people actually finding any real solutions or ideas to make their world better? Are they learning anything meaningful about China that can be reflected to their life, politics or ideologies? I can’t help but ask — just like with any other social media trend out there — is it really that deep?

As you can sort of imagine, it’s not that deep. Users are just into the Chinese aesthetics and not so much into what it means to be Chinese in a real way — the history, the ideologies, the cultural context, and everything else that makes up a Chinese identity — no one is interested in that part because it doesn’t actually affect them in a real way. Boiling their apples or doing “a Chinese morning routine” are just cute little things for their feed and for the algorithm to prioritize their posts. It is nothing but a mere meme post.

Japan is going through the same thing, only louder and longer. People have been knee-deep in their ‘very Japanese time’ of their lives for quite some time now: foreigners 3buying coin laundries and making a businesses out of them; people sourcing matcha from rural farms; many foreigners moving to Japan but soon realizing it’s a deeply conformist society they have to assimilate into and feeling less of a spark; making a personal life style brand around Tokyo after moving here.

Everyone is talking about Japan as if they fundamentally understand it after their first and only visit, or as if some liberal reading a bunch of problematic articles about Japan can become the spokesperson for every sugai-Japan-post comment section. Perhaps my writing has led them to think that Japan is a terrible place, and it’s time for me to repurpose what I actually mean.

The reality is that our cities are clean and people are relatively polite — if they want to be — but it’s also built on far more ambivalence than what appears on the surface, almost uniquely more so than other countries. It has become almost impossible to describe what the “real” Japan is, or what’s real at all anymore, because we are all just imitating each other. What is real? What is original? What is a country supposed to represent anymore?

Drinking matcha daily as a morning practice or ritual isn’t a reality for Japanese people. Practicing Zen or wabi-sabi isn’t a reality either. Try getting on an 8am train on the Hanzōmon Line on a Monday, and come back to me if you still believe in mindfulness. It’s just a matter of how the world — usually the West — packages it to gain something out of it. This has been my frustration; the duality and the double-sidedness of it all has fucked with my sanity. It feels unbelievably unjust that my lived life is nothing like how other people online portray it: so even-keeled.

As someone who has lived here my whole life, the dichotomy between 4the reality and the aspirational life that Japan embodies is becoming too large to ignore. As this TikToker said in Chinesemaxxing content, it feels unfair — and it is unfair. People do not get to romanticize and/or Orientalize our lived experiences—even if it means that you are not patronizing the people in it. It symbolically looks like tokenism; “I love the culture so much and I have so much respect for the people!” is just a (algorithmic) narrative that is convenient for you.

Hey, what is traveling if you don’t fall in love with the place and people. I get it and it’s fine. But why does every J-content feel like something is being taken away from us. Why does the personal experience feel so impersonal now?

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Since it was a long one this time, I’m going to keep the recommendation section short.

• I have loved reading this piece reced by Dolly Alderton herself. On the New Yorker This Old Man by Roger Angel. It’s suppose to be a cynical take on age but I somehow cried many times reading it.

• I listened to this episode on Diabolical lies “Ethical consumptions” & the history of “selling out” and really enjoyed it. Some honorable mention articles in the episode are this Current Affairs article by Emily Topping on the Riyadh comedy festival. The age of double-sell-out by W. David Marx.

• This one by the rise & decline of the white male asian female couple in america was super thought provoking that I’m compelled to write what this means in the context of Japan.

When I recently discovered the origin of the name “Saul Goodman”—yes, the character from the show Better Call Saul. I’m currently rewatching this excellent Vince Gilligan creation, and in it, Jimmy decides to rebrand himself, renaming his law practice. When his girlfriend asks why Saul Goodman, he says, “Oh, you know… it’s all good, man.” Frankly, I’m not the same person since I discovered this. To me, this sort of English soars my love for language—you see, I have been busy.

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In the ancient Chinese calendar, there’s a system where a year is divided into 24 solar terms. Each term lasts for about 15 days and is based on the solar (sun) calendar, not the lunar (moon) one. The reason for this is, astronomically speaking, that 24 is apparently a natural division of how the sun’s yearly cycle works. Additionally, the system made sense and worked for farmers: to know when to plant, to predict cold and heat, and to prepare for frosts and floods. For farmers, dividing the year roughly by 12 (months) was too imprecise.

On the other hand, there’s the Gregorian calendar, which is the general one we are all accustomed to today. This calendar was invented by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, more or less to make sense of the year, months, and days. Seasons were more of a secondary consideration for the Gregorian calendar; it leaned more toward administration, a more structured approach, perhaps.

This isn’t a statement about which calendar is better or not, but a post I saw post this and made me think about my relationship with the new year, seasons, and, in particular, January.

I’ve never liked January—I mean, honestly, who does? I live in Japan, and unless you come from a warm country, generally speaking, January is not a pleasant month. The current calendar that we organize our lives around encourages us to stop everything at the end of the year. If you are an advanced freelancer, perhaps you have already decided not to take clients after a certain day in December.

I remember working in a company—Christmas isn’t a national holiday for us, but I still felt like a loser going into the office on Christmas day, so I would declare my PTO from the 24th, which, for my colleagues, I’m sure made them think I wasn’t a “hard worker.” Because of the calendar year, we design our lives around these holidays: when to rest, where to go, and what to do. (Of course, I hope it’s obvious that this doesn’t apply to all workers. I’m particularly bowing so hard to those homies who work at Pizza-la—a Japan-born pizza chain—on their motorbikes, wearing Santa costumes because corporate thought it was a cool idea.)

If I’m at home on New Year’s Eve, my comfort formula is to drink hot cocoa and eat microwave popcorn while watching the whole series of Harry Potter and Sex and the City. December—for most office workers who work on their laptops—is the month to gear up for this particular rest: to do nothing. It helps that no one else will bother you as well, because everyone—if you do similar work, of course—is doing the same thing as you are. We prepare ourselves leading up to this ultimate kind of rest: a well-deserved one.

Then comes January. It has never made much sense to me to start anew so abruptly. I would admit I could be seasonally biased, as I hate the cold and much prefer the heat, or I feel like I can endure the heat more and get myself out of the house and accomplish things than in the cold. But by and large, this sudden shift to productivity from the luxurious lay-around at home or anywhere for that matter feels rhythmically wrong. Didn’t we all just do nothing, and I’m expected to snap right out of the dream state of doing nothing into something new? In fact, assigning myself a set of goals? Says the person who did write a set of goals and paste them on my wall to see every day.

The thought of it gives me whiplash.

I know, of course, that this only applies to people who do follow the structure of how December to January works: to finish up your work for the year, rest well, and get right back to it. There are people, including myself, who like to “turn off” for a bit. My father is not included in this; in fact, even during お正月 (oshōgatsu), he prefers to be busy, like making up a DIY project for a new garden table or researching investment advice on YouTube. “Turning off” in and of itself might be a conscious choice to make or not to make.

Emma Gannon wrote a book with The Pound Project called A Year of Nothing, talking about something similar to this. (Full disclosure: I haven’t read the book yet, but I’m familiar with her work.) I like Emma Gannon’s thinking on work, life, and rest. She writes a snippet about how the book came about in this post, and in it, she quotes a line from the book.

“In nature, things are allowed to break down and regenerate and build back up again. But as humans, it feels trickier. Life is busy. You can’t really schedule in a breakdown.”

I think there’s something deep about this that could be a separate post on our productivity culture and how, today, we think that rest is something to be earned, whether it’s well-deserved or not. When my friend Yuri texted me before I left for Vietnam for a family vacation at the end of the year, she said, “Have fun! You deserve it!” It stuck with me because I really felt that I had earned it this time. If it was a different time in my life, I would have probably thought differently. But yeah, I felt like I deserved it. I didn’t spend money on traveling in 2025, and I tried my best to keep my “silly” purchases to a minimum. I thought it was my prerogative to sit back and not take the driver’s seat of my life for a bit. It’s not irresponsible, we have a phrase to describe this in our working culture : it’s balancing my work and life.

According to the 二十四節気—the 24 solar terms—it was 大寒 (daikan), major cold, or, as my inner child would read that kanji, o-samu (big cold), on the 20th. It’s supposedly the coldest day of the whole year, and in Tokyo the lowest was −4°C, which is indeed freezing.

My body feels absolutely stiff; every five minutes I catch my back rounding and my shoulders creeping up to my ears, clenching against the piercing cold wind. But one thing people should know about winter in Japan is that on a sunny day, it’s incredibly beautiful. The bluest of skies, and the air—it tastes like how air is supposed to taste: no one but you knows. I’m enjoying a crema-topped Americano in my new mug in my sunlit apartment. I love my new “recipe box” for putting my handwritten recipes in an old medicine box. I love writing in my five-year Hobonichi journal every night. I love teaching for Astray. I love that Japan’s breaking news headlines are things like we hit 40 million visitors in 2025. I love that my friend Hena decided to embark on a big life journey to London, which is a great excuse to visit her in Europe soon. I’m happy that my parents are healthy and fine. I saw my neighbor’s Labrador sticking its adorable bobbling head out at the edge of a window and I said hi.

yeah.

It’s… it’s all good man.

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So, how are you are doing? and also Happy new year! What’s the new projects you are working on or things that you are excited about that you can’t wait to tell someone.

what have we been reading!

・I finished The Vegetarian by Han Kang and Filterworld by Kyle Chyaka. While both books are very different, I loved both of them a lot. This quote from The Vegetarian is so compelling.

It’s your body, you can treat it however you please. The only area where you’re free to do just as you like. And even that doesn’t turn out how you wanted.

Ouf, especially after this podcast I listened to by Diabolical Lies (WHICH IS SUCH A GOOD PODCAST.) titled Is there a Skinny Apocalypse in Hollywood?

・ wrote such a moving piece about the world’s state after the death of Charlie Kirk. (Who knew moving and Charlie Kirk will be in one sentence.)

・One of the best non-fiction piece I’ve read recently. In disguise by Hiba on Astray.

・This piece by on Rent Free, How to be a Critic was a good read that I will probably go back to it once in a while.

・I had to come back to this piece I read last year. It’s a handy piece to keep around your desk. How to tell if something is AI-written? by on

・The New York Times Magazine published the most wrecking pieces I’ve read in a while. They Answered an Ad for Surrogates, and Found Themselves in a Nightmare by Sarah A. Topol. The dark, dark side of the global fertility industry.

・I know I’m incredibly late to this conversation but it doesn’t matter, I’m caught up baby! I’m learning so much about critical thinking and critiquing through , and this is a great exhibit on why. The Cut piece by Emrata Buying Myself Back When does a model own her own image? and Haley’s response piece The ER effect on

I just felt the need to declare my recent ceramic discovery, which I ended up purchasing! Rog pots make these smooth, scribbly round mugs. It apparently makes a good froth beer. I have been following Coz ceramics for a while and when I saw that they are doing a pink themed exhibition, I had to purchase (a few). The pink color is of course all natural from the clay, its color changes depending on how she works it in by hand.

Oh! lastly, I rarely do work announcements or showcasing here, but I’m very happy this voice over turned out, so allow me to share a bit. It’s now live on Nowness and would love for everyone to watch — just a mere 5 minute clip!

I’m so grateful that my friends’s trusted in me to be apart of their personal projects.

Alrighty, thank you for reading and i’ll be in your inbox next week. Megumi x

While I said last week would be my last one, I just wanted to quickly pop in to ask for some guidance on a class I’m teaching next year.

As many of you may know, I teach a few classes for Astray, and we’re planning our Winter 2026 session soon. One of the classes I teach is called “Writing About Japan.” It has evolved over the years, but as I’ve grown as a writer and thinker, I wanted to see if anyone else has any input on what students might be interested in hearing from me. (For context, I used to be a office worker for 6 years, went from Sales to freelance writer, translator, coordinator, Grew up in Japan but I’m half American half Japanese. Completely fluent in both languages and cultures.)

As mentioned, I’ve changed the course a few times over the years. Most recently, it functioned as both a critical thinking class on Japanese culture and centering it with some writing prompts. This year, I’m wondering: is there anything more to add? Are there any burning questions about Japan people want to know but they can’t get through social media, or activities that might be interesting to explore with students?

What are people most interested in when it comes to Japan? Is it just the culture, or is there a topic we could collectively spend time on in class and really think through together?You can read about Astray in Japan Times that I wrote this year.

Alright. This is really it from me in 2025! See ya next year x

This week in Tokyo’s groundbreaking hot-goss news: the infamous donut craze pioneer “I’m donut?” stirred some controversy over their donut display. Stay with me. Controversy is a strong word, of course, but alas this is the world that I live in. The display in question had pink tiles as the base, and the donuts were placed on the tiles directly, spaced out from each other like one of those “minimalistic-industrial looks.” People were upset because the tiles resembled a bath-like aesthetic or even bathroom tiles, and the public’s opinion was that it “felt unsanitary.” “I get that it’s purely for aesthetics but… I lost my appetite!” said the angry donut eaters around town.

The only reason I brought this up is because, at this point in my life, this kind of uproar or public stir only gives me comfort; ah, the reality I live in is so trivial. Whether or not what happens on the grounds in Tokyo is often too trivial or banal isn’t necessarily the point—but I feel myself indifferent to these things and, simultaneously, a perfect amount of enlightenment as well. How lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it) we are to be in a reality to care for something so… trivial, I guess.

To say that I am indifferent to most things would be a misrepresentation of who I am. I care for far too many things in life—I just feel indifferent to the things that don’t affect me or my well-being. I choose to live a life with 1good intentions, with confidence and sureness. Regrettably, caring about a donut display and talking about that on Threads or X isn’t on my list of things to do. (But 6,7 I care)

This is a long-winded way to say that this year was about having this perfect amount of enlightenment in my life. It feels radical to have arrived at this state through ongoing learnings and unlearnings. It’s been genuinely exciting to find my writing voice this year and to establish what sort of matters in life I’m interested in and write about those feelings, both personally and professionally. (Some articles I’m proud of from this year are with Byline magazine, Japan Times and this cute essay for a personal project with Weekend Romance). It’s been such a ride to say yes to most things and try out the new. I have done multiple jobs this year that one person would do in a lifetime—2voice-over acting, script translation, and script supervisor, to name a few.

This isn’t to say that I don’t struggle with the things that challenge my confidence level. I still have an inferiority complex. I think that my writing isn’t good enough or that there are better translators out there, and I dismiss the fact that clients only ask me to do something because they couldn’t find someone better. I still have body dysmorphia and treat my body in a way it doesn’t deserve at all. I don’t think I’m cool enough to go to a certain party, even when I was invited by those very “cool people.”

What I would say, though, is that one thing that has changed drastically this year is catching myself when I go into these thoughts and adjusting them. I once saw a quote in someone’s newsletter: “Just because you see the trailhead of the thought doesn’t mean you have to go down it.” I was living in this this year. I feel like I have reached a different phase of self-awareness, and it’s forming me into a person with more curiosity and fervor in all the things.

Lastly, I wanted to thank everyone for reading along with my non-frequent newsletter once again this year. I’ve been receiving such kind feedback on my writing these days, and as I said in my 33 Life Lessons, telling people how you think about their art or anything that they are doing is such a meaningful act—and I appreciate it so much.

Next year is a big rebrand year! Sam is working on a cool graphic for my newsletter rebrand (the name will change as well!), and I can’t wait to show everyone very soon! Since I did a list of books last week and I loosely promised that I would write some of my year recs, in honor of the festive season, I will leave you with my favorite recipes and TV shows. After all, what is New Year’s without rotting away on the couch, eating freshly baked cookies and popcorn?

Thank you all and happy holidays xx see you in a new year.

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The recipes :

・ Soondubu by Cafe Maddy it has been my winter go-to Vegetarian soup of the year.

・I made two batches of Chili this year from Hailee Catalano’s recipe and . (I found Katie on my For You page and I love her content) Did you know that people actually don’t put beans as a default in their chili?? I was actually surprised but also delighted to know that chili works with just meat as well.

・This Congee with mushroom “XO” sauce by . I must buy her cookbook because anything I make from her is a delight.

・I have been a chili oil queen this year! and made Hetty Lui Mckinnon’s recipe many times. I saw her recipe on and this mushroom chili with almonds is such a great treat, putting it on top of rice is my preferred way of eating it.

・Sausage roll (I looked at a few but the stack influenced me most) for any gathering is the way to go. And this Frizzled Chickpea salad is always a crowd pleaser!!

・I know there’s a lot of recommendation here, but I genuinely think we have similar taste in food — her weekday healthy taco bowl is so GOOD! I had it many nights earlier this year with cauliflower rice.

・I know I’m like a decade late to Broma Bakery by Sarah Fennel but her cookie recipes all phenomenal (already made like 5 of them) and her banana bread was maybe one of the best ones I’ve ever made. Don’t sleep on a single serve funfetti cookie.

The TV shows :

・Sirens (Netflix) : Starring Julianne Moore, I have surprisingly enjoyed this kitschy feel.

・Too much (Netflix) : Casting Megan Stalter for this role was genius and you know if it’s anything made by Lena Dunham, I will support it. (I wrote a piece here as well)

・Adolescence (Netflix) : Just so moved by any Stephen Graham performance.

・Pulse (Netflix) : I don’t know what it is with medical DRAMA!!! but it’s just so watchable.

・The Pitt (HBO Max) : You know what you have to do if you haven’t watched it yet.

・The Beast In me (Netflix) : I LOVE a psycho-crime thriller show and this was probably one of my favorite ones yet of the year.

・Severance Season Two (Apple TV): give me a show that I can enjoy sans my phone.

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I received good feedback last week on my back-and-forth thoughts on motherhood, and I deeply appreciate anyone who reads my stuff. Thank you all once again!

Today’s piece is a list—something I’d like to do more of in 2026. Ultimately, there’s a certain look, a certain template, a certain aesthetic choice that works on Substack. Whether I want to lean into it or just keep doing my own thing is still up for debate, but if I want to be “serious” about monetizing my Substack—which I am—I’m tempted to think about whether I should lean into the templates that work here.

Regardless, I’m happy to share my list of the year: book edition. I do think I read relatively a lot compared to the average person, but there are also so many other great Substacks that focus on book reviews like , for an amazing world-wide translation selection, and for it’s publishing deep-dives and thoughtful book review and interviews.

That said, here’s what you can expect from my list. My choice of books is pretty diverse and fairly timeless. I live in Japan, so it’s hard for me to get timely contemporary English books. With shipping costs and the weak yen, new releases can get pretty expensive. So! I usually read older, used books making the rounds on Mercari or books I swap with friends. Unless I decide to read on Kindle—which isn’t that often, since I prefer physical books—you can expect a good range of old and new moving forward.

Also! I read in both English and Japanese, and if anyone is interested in the modern Japanese zeitgeist of work culture, womanhood, complex customs, society, and more—I think you’d like the list as well. Okay then, please enjoy my first attempt.

Ah! This goes without saying but if you live in Tokyo and would like to swap books with me, I would be so happy to!

The books are in no particular order, I think.

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Earthlings by Sayaka Murata Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori

This book took me on a journey I didn’t expect it would. I was panting by the time I finished reading it. I was overwhelmed. As a general note, there’s a throughline across Japanese female writers—and it’s often about the existential meaning of what a human’s role is (or a woman’s, for that matter) in society. With Murata’s themes (in Convenience Store Woman as well), there’s an outcast character trying to fit in, in their own way, within society.

In Japan, this theme works so well because we’re obsessed with normalcy. But what happens when you’re not normal enough? Normal or not, what happens if you just don’t want the life that others won’t question? How can you live your most “authentic life” in a country that pushes us to be like everyone else? Maybe those who do the expected things in life are from Mars, and the rest of the oddlings are Earthlings, at least from the book’s protagonist’s point of view. Hmmm…

In Earthlings in particular, I loved that she refers to what would be considered a “normal life” as a “factory.” One of the characters says that after passionately disagreeing with the “normal life” people, he realized he went too far—“Oh, sorry… usually I have some patience toward this topic and I just hold my breath so the ‘factory’ people won’t find me…”

The book is filled with descriptions of extremely graphic and grotesque sexual assault, as well as physical and verbal abuse—proceed with your own judgment.

Yoru ga akeru by Kanako Nishi *translation not available as of yet

I’m pretty surprised by how little Nishi’s books are read abroad, largely because not many of her big-hit works have been translated yet. I love her books. Nishi is one of those writers who explores themes that translate well to a wider audience. Not to mince up her work, but I think many of her books examine the dilemmas of the human condition.

Yoru ga Akeru is a devastating book—I couldn’t put it down. It begins sad, continues to be sad, and ends sadly. It’s a book about confronting ikizura-sa, a phrase often used in Japan to describe how, culturally and systemically, it’s “difficult to live.” The story is told from one man’s perspective, reflecting on himself and his high school friend. Themes like poverty, “black” working culture (a term used in Japan to describe toxic work environments), and physical and verbal abuse are explored.

It’s especially interesting that we’ve been hearing more about how men are struggling in society now, but in a Japanese context, we see these men pushing themselves to the point of absolute suffering. It’s as if we’ve collectively created a place for them to suffer. There’s just so much to reflect on.

The Names by Florence Knapp

If this synopsis isn’t enough for you to pick this book up, I don’t know what to tell ya!

“Spanning thirty-five years, what follows are three alternate and alternating versions of Cora’s and her young son’s lives, shaped by her choice of name.” The question the novel asks is simple, yet profound: can a name change the course of a life?

This book—like many, it seems—was my favorite read this year. I was already thinking about pitching a story somewhere about how names affect our personalities and lives, especially I feel this way with a name that is sort-of hard to pronounce to the anglophone speakers. I’ve always wondered if my name had been written in katakana, or if it sounded more foreign, whether my life’s course would have been different. It would have, absolutely. This book made me think about the possibility of another life.

The Dilemmas of working women by Fumio Yamamoto Translated by Brian Bergstrom

The English edition has a stellar cover, first of all—but gosh, I wish I had known about Fumio Yamamoto much earlier. She’s my favorite Japanese author right now. I was saddened to learn that she passed away suddenly in 2021 from pancreatic cancer. This book was first published in 2000 and won the Naoki Prize in 2001—it’s mind-blowing that, even after 25 years, the book still holds so much truth.

The book explores themes of motherhood, unemployment, marriage, and divorce through a day-in-the-life of five female characters. It’s told in a novella style, and I found it incredibly easy to digest. Women doing their best while no one seems to notice their efforts; the hidden and invisible women are far too relatable.

You can get a taste of one of the short stories in The Paris Review called “Naked,” also translated by Brian Bergstrom.

Diary of a void by Emi Yagi Translated by David Boyd and Lucy North

I only learned about this book and its author through an event I attended this year with the translator Yuki Tejima. It’s funny when you read Goodreads reviews, because reviewers often describe Japanese novels as “tonally, I didn’t care for it,” or “boring,” or “underwhelmed.” That, right there, is a distinct cultural difference that even the best translators probably can’t fully translate. I think about language in general a lot because it is my job as well, but Japanese writing can feel tonally underwhelming—it’s all in the nuance and that’s something you learn by being prolific in the cultural elements as well.

I love the idea of a Japanese woman—someone who is expected never to break rules and to be obedient—saying, “fuck it, I’m going to lie about this big thing.” She fakes a pregnancy to escape banal, prescribed womanly roles. It’s a tricky slope to go on a journey with a woman who is faking her pregnancy, but you soon realize that’s not the point. It’s more about what a woman’s body is expected to do—whether you’re pregnant or not—and what your role is supposed to be.

Alphabetical diaries by Sheila Heti

I just love this woman. Interestingly, I hadn’t read any of her books before this one, so my next stop is her popular novels Pure Colour or Motherhood. I feel so inspired every time I read her articles online—like that five-part series where she talks to an AI. She’s not afraid, which is such a good quality in an honest writer. I love her existential acceptance of things—it’s truly aspirational.

It’s not a difficult book to explain: it’s an alphabetized diary book. She sorted entries alphabetically from a diary she kept online in a spreadsheet. While it’s not hard to describe, it took her a decade to finish this book, and I love how she tries to make sense of things—even when they feel random and banal.

Other books by hers I’d like to work through next year are Motherhood, Pure Colour, and, as mentioned before, Women in Clothes.

Mongrel by Hanako Footman

I picked this book for one of our book club reads this year. It’s a book about women—which we love—following three characters as their intertwining narratives unfold. Out of all the books I’ve read that are set in Japan and written by an English-language writer, the descriptions of rural Japan—the summer festivals, the fields, the sounds—were especially gorgeous. Really well executed.

It made me think a lot about community and how representation and identity truly matter, Mei’s story in particular. It’s a hopeful book that explores a common thread among us all : a sense of yearning.

All fours by Miranda July

I remember that last year, every woman had been talking about this book. It was another book club pick, and I did enjoy it a lot. Contrary to some people’s opinions, I actually really enjoy “sort of” autobiographical novels. Of course writers pull from their own experiences to build a story—that instinctively feels normal to me.

I’m not going to explain the book here, since there are already so many reviews out there, but I loved how the character seems to surrender (?) to motherhood—while also stripping it away from herself, and even resisting it. That tension is such a compelling hook to me.

Body Work : The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos

I had this on my bookshelf for a while but never had a chance to pick it up until this year. There’s something about nonfiction, memoir-style writing that I really need to be in the right headspace for. She makes a compelling argument that women’s trauma stories shouldn’t be dismissed as “navel-gazing,” or reduced to comments on how “brave” we are for being honest about them.

If you’re a writer—or a non-writer, of course—and interested in exploring personal narrative and healing through writing, this book might do just the trick as a form of writing therapy.

Honorable mentions because why not!

Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa translated by Polly Barton

I was actually gifted the English edition, which was so cool, after writing a piece for Byline. Regardless, I read it in Japanese already because I’d been hearing so much buzz around this book. Despite the fact that she became the first physically disabled person to win the Akutagawa Prize in 2023, she is a smart writer. It’s provocative and radical in its critique of ableism. Also in Polly Barton, we trust.

Men without Women by Haruki Murakami

I’m just not a Murakami fan, and that’s fine. I don’t have to be a fan of someone to read their work. I put it in the honorable mentions because I did enjoy the way he wrote about the pitiful men of seven short stories. These men can’t sort of get it together without the women in their lives — which is interesting because I find Murakami’s books often more or less, “written for men.”

Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

I really wanted to like this book! and while I sort of did, it didn’t scratch the itch as I would have expected. I got her first novel that went viral, Cleopatra and Frankenstein, so I’m excited to read that next year.

Stay True by Hua Hsu

I do end up managing to get one memoir read every year. This was an anticipated one for me since I wanted to read it for ages — I enjoyed it so much. Such a phenomenal noticer (a term I recently heard from writer Octavia Bright), such beautiful writing about his friend Ken, who was killed in a carjacking. It’s just a really gorgeous book.

If you are interested, my current reads are ;

・Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture by Kyle Chayka. I read longing for less : living with minimalism with Sam this year and did a book club about it lol We love KC!

・All about love by Bell Hooks (My first ever bell hooks book!)

・Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

・The Vegetarian by Han Kang

*The last two books are my unfinished books I started earlier this year.

On my to read list for 2026;

・Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

・Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico translated by Sophie Hughes*which seems like a book that might be selected for the next bookclub!

・Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

・Margo’s got money troubles by Rufi Thorpe

・In favor of the sensitive man by Anaïs Nin

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Just a tiny recommendation this week

• This piece was on ‘s reading list. A piece by Ismail Ibrahim House Arab . A fact-checker’s day-in-life at the NYT during the war on Gaza.

• Then I really enjoyed his writing, I also found this piece with AAWW Death, Mediated.

• ‘s Interview: Fisher the Bookseller Explains How Bookstores Decide Which Books to Sell It’s such an insider look into bookstores and bookbuyers! it’s so fun if you like reading that sort of stuff.

• As I was reading about Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries, I came across Jenny Holzer’s alphabetized art work Truisms. She took art out of the museums and into public spaces in 1977.

Next week will probably be my last newsletter of the year! I will be doing recipes, articles roundups, and perhaps assortments of material things I got that I think was a good choice.

Thank you for reading <3 and more importantly, what did you read that you LOVED this year!!!

“In short, you may be actually writing only two or three hours a day, but your mind, in one way or another, is working on it twenty-four hours a day —yes, while you sleep—but only if some sort of draft or earlier version already exists.”

**

As a woman (a phrase that feels like the butt of a joke these days), I think about motherhood a lot, like many women around me. I am of childbearing age, I’ve frozen my eggs (though not enough) after a pretty traumatic month of doing so, it’s realistic for me to think seriously about all of this — especially because I do kind of want children. But I’m also realistic, and maybe a bit too self-aware. I can’t really claim to be in the “I’ll think about it later” phase anymore; I need to have a clearer sense of where I stand. And yet, as so many of us have felt before, this matter isn’t a simple yes or no, not always black or white, do it or don’t do it.

I recently read a piece by Hannah Black called “Mother, maybe.” She writes about the decision to have children— once it used to be an uncertain, indecisive, even hesitant matter for her. She plays with the language of decision and indecision, and notes, “The question of whether or not to become a parent was, in a way, beyond the reach of reason.” I can’t remember who said it, but I once heard someone famous argue that women shouldn’t miss out on motherhood — that it’s something you can’t let pass you by. When I heard that, I was tempted. I already more or less know what womanhood feels like — not fully, of course; if nothing unexpected happens, I might live another fifty plus more years. But I’ve already had a good taste of being a woman simply by just existing. Motherhood, though… The idea is always there like a cloud above my head — not a dark cloud, but a cloud — reminding me that the unknown possibility is there for me to think about. I’m afraid of missing the opportunity to become a mother — the irrevocability of that choice.

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But then again, the ambivalence hits. There’s a fear that I might be making a mistake by not choosing motherhood — that I’m not brave enough to become a mother. And yet, I deeply enjoy being a woman: financially independent, living alone, ordering onion rings and a beer for dinner just because I feel like it, sharing funny stories with my boyfriend and friends. These things, I’m sure mothers can have as well, but I have a feeling that it won’t feel the same with a living human in my house.

I’ve been reading a lot of Japanese female authors back-to-back lately — Fumio Yamamoto, Sayaka Murata, Banana Yoshimoto, and Kaori Ekuni, to name a few. There’s a subtext to their books that they pen about their female characters and that is often about pain: the barriers, the pressures, the frustrating designs of being a woman. I can’t neatly summarize it yet, but to me, being a woman and being a mother are two separate things. And when I read their work, whether a character chooses motherhood or not, there is still so much pain in whichever path she takes. Whatever you choose, it’s personal — and as once wrote, “the personal, after all, is deeply political.” (this reading list by her is something I’m trying to work towards on next year!)

There was an interesting internet outburst in 2023 regarding an initiative by “Soup Stock Tokyo” that left many mothers feeling…uncomfortable and unwelcomed. It wasn’t because of the shop, but because of the public’s opinions (women specifically) on mothers. Soup Stock, which I occasionally use myself, is a chain soup shop. It often sits inside train stations or other accessible spots, and is largely targeted toward women who want to solo dine in silence. Eating spaces in Japan are knowingly gendered. I love going to a ramen place by myself, but I am the minority there. A man sitting at Soup Stock is an equally rare sight.

They decided to launch an initiative aligned with their slogan “soup for all” — offering free baby food at all locations for mothers who come in with their kids. The goal was to help mothers feel comfortable going out to eat and not feel like they don’t belong. But online, women had some strong feelings about this. “Ugh, the place is going to be crawling with children.” “The shop is already small. It’s going to be cramped with strollers.” And one of the most insidious comments, which ended up dividing the whole controversy, was: “They (Soup Stock) don’t care about working women who don’t have children anymore.”

The commentary died down fairly quickly, as most internet commentaries do, but what made this case unique was that Soup Stock released a kind of non-apology apology letter. I still find it remarkable that a Japanese company was not urged to apologize but instead stood for their case. They stated that “we stand by our initiative, and this is in solidarity with mothers who felt hesitant to come to our shops” — “soup for all,” alas.

I see these hesitant mothers all over the city, and it makes me angry. It makes me angry that people make a face when mothers get on the bus with strollers. I get furious when people walk on train platforms staring at their phones while mothers are trying their best not to bump into anyone. It’s not okay that mothers have to wait until everyone else goes first to enter or exit a place because “they take too long” with their children.

I was listening to Pen Pals, hosted by and (a new podcast in my daily rotation that I’m loving), and was a guest on a recent episode. She talks about her typical day that was very similar to mine: making a nice cup of coffee, music playing in her office, reading a couple of chapters first thing, and getting her creative work done in those first few hours. As Olivia says, it’s simple and not that complicated but this too, also brings me great comfort to have “a room of one’s own,” in a way. A place and time dedicated only to myself.

One of the hosts with a child responds, “That sounds so nice — just working on projects you’re pouring yourself into… it’s such a dream state.” I can only assume — since it wasn’t explicitly stated — that having children would prevent that kind of life. It is a dream state to simply focus on me. Or more accurately, it’s the only state I’ve ever known, and it is, in fact, dreamy.

I wonder about a life with a child sometimes, but I also ruminate about a life without. I’m comfortable for now to be in between these thoughts. I’m at ease to know that the lived and unlived life isn’t that black or white. Every woman before me probably has deeply thought of it before, or not. Regardless, the thought is always there —asleep and awake— in my mind.

Things that I think you would like;

Reads

• This piece sorry about your cookies by is the best thing I read this week. Her recipes are SO YUM. I love what she’s doing now on Tiktok too. Dinner you can make under 30 minutes (in a real way.)

• How to (finally) write your book by . I wrote this passage down as fast as I could.

Finally, befriend a band of fellow writers so you don’t have to travel alone. Follow their lanterns when your own light goes out. Remember, creativity is contagious. Make their stories your parables. Take their boats through high water. They’ve traveled this road longer than you. When they read aloud, notice how their voices tremble with holiness. You have been blessed. Now, go out and bless someone else.

• A Chinese proverb that I learned last week on a shoot. 好死不如赖活 (hǎo sǐ bù rú lài huó). A bad life is better than a good death.

• posts emerging writer’s essays on her Substack every two weeks? I didn’t know this and I’m ashamed!! As in Slumber by wrecked me.

• The Goon Squad by Daniel Kolitz for Harper’s was a fascinating read but very bleak.

• ‘s a year without opinions is SO good - this is maybe a whole different post for another day.

Recipes

• Justine Snacks did a Cookie advent calendar and oh my god. It’s just so impressive. In in, I discovered @bromabakery and her cinnamon roll cookies and funfetti cookie for one….honestly everything looks so good. I made her banana bread and it’s literally — as banana breads go— so easy but it was maybe one of my best ones yet.

• I haven’t cooked Alison Roman in a while, but when it comes to soups, I trust her. This tofu and mushroom soup is absolutely simple but so so delicious. Rich mushroom flavor!

• My friend Kiera, a recipe developer and food writer based in Tokyo

  , was one of the Bon Appetit’s top cookbook of the year!!!! So exciting and cool. In the list, I also discovered Maunika Gowardhan Indian food writer! Curry next week for dinner!

Oh if anyone is interested, which no offense but why would you be? My top song of 2025 according to Spotify Wrap, such a scam this marketing… was HAIM’s Relationships. I am very happy about that though.

ok - till next week :) Megumi

I just wanted to write about some of the things that struck me most that day, and share a little sneak peek with some black-and-white photos (by )! If we host another one next year — which we’ve decided we will !!!! you can get a taste of what it was like through this post.

*We don’t make any profit from this event for now; you’re just paying for the venue and the drink that comes with it <3 In the future, who knows? As a merch sucker, I love the idea of making tote bags, notebooks, sweatshirts… a zine? could be fun. Or maybe we can invite cool and famous people to chat with us! Or we can rent an interesting space, like a library with velvety sofas! I don’t know, but a girl can dream.

The idea for “Offline School” came from my dear colleague and friend Leiya. Back in August, she told us she wanted to do something salon-adjacent, and naturally, I was on board. She said, “You know… it’s like that meme. I don’t have anything to talk about, but I want to talk with a friend.” I can’t find the exact meme she meant, but I completely share that feeling.

We also felt there was a real demand in Tokyo for a space like this. People who move here often make the same remark: I’m so lonely. It used to surprise me, as someone who had only Japanese friends at the time, because I assumed foreigners were naturally better at making friends. It’s just the more casual, more friendly attitude they have. But I think the loneliness people feel in Japan comes from a gap, a lack of willingness to go there — to be vulnerable and honest.

I genuinely believe some Japanese people think honesty and vulnerability are cringe. We start withdrawing from conversations that feel “too real” or “too honest.” I don’t blame anyone. I relate. Sometimes the Japanese language doesn’t even offer the vocabulary to explore those candid feelings. That’s why I often say English is more expressive than Japanese.

I guess the urge to start this space was also meant for me to push my own comfort zones as well. We wanted the space to feel less contrived and more genuine, that the place can stimulate, motivate, and excite people to come and get involved. As a self employed writer, translator, and coordinator, gosh — you really need to work towards getting involved.

When I think about community building, or any kind of people-driven space, I’m reminded of something Gemma said in one of her closing remarks for Astray last winter. As a woman in her mid-thirties, freelancing, childfree, and living in rented homes around the world with friends, she’s interested in the idea of post-family structures and building strong, borderless communities. She talks about how traditional gender roles and family structures are shifting, and how we’re increasingly finding our support systems through a more “chosen family” structure. When it comes to building strong communities across different backgrounds, she says we don’t all have to be close friends, instead, it’s about knowing the people around you and checking in on them — “practising care as a verb, as a doing word,” as she puts it so beautifully.

This idea of caring, actively doing the care, really moved me when I first heard it, and it has stayed with me ever since. What can I say, I’m a fire sign and a passionate trailblazer. I care a lot about a lot of things, and I’ve come to feel that caring is the antidote to a more loved and connected world as we somehow lost track of it.

For our very first event, we decided the topic would be “On Creative Habits: Mapping Creative Rhythms.” I personally love hearing about people’s creative routines. I’m a sucker for any “here’s my morning routine” (what is morning routine without a match, scary, 4 senior dog mom doing god’s work)content on tiktok. Tell me what notebook you use; tell me how you schedule your day; tell me what time you wake up; tell me your gym routine; tell me your coffee order; tell me what book you’re reading right now!

Granted, these kinds of day-in-the-life blogs are basically useless for my own creative practice — but they give me comfort. There’s something nice about seeing someone else having a productive day.

In our session, while leaving room for everyone to explore what creativity means to them individually, we identified the routines, habits, and rhythms we currently have — and then designed our ideal rhythms by looking closely at our existing flow. We shared what other creatives do and when they feel inspired: Zadie Smith doesn’t write every day, only when she wants to; Haruki Murakami is a rigid timekeeper with a highly structured daily schedule; Miranda July maintains some structure but leaves room for flexibility, sitting down to write in small fractions whenever life allows.

We asked everyone to reflect quietly with a piece of paper and pen, and then to think out loud in small groups. And if nothing sparked, that was completely fine too. Again, anything is allowed. The beauty of this classroom was that there were no wrong ways to approach it. As Leiya said, “If there’s a meet-cute, I would love that as well.”

What I learned about myself is that I’m creative both in bursts and in long stretches. I’m a firm believer that two things can be true at once. A lot of different approaches work for me — I just tend to procrastinate, so it’s really a matter of not suppressing it, but figuring out when to fit that procrastination time in. As Emi, our beautiful singer-songwriter guest (link to emi’s spotify), said she doesn’t think she’s a “good” full-time singer. In fact, she works better as a songwriter when she’s juggling many things at once. I’m absolutely the same.

A few years ago, I read a piece by Rainesford Stauffer titled “Is My Writing a Hobby or a Career?” She talks about how not being a full-time writer is actually okay for her because the other jobs that financially support her also fuel her writing and idea phase. I feel that too — I probably don’t ever want to only write, because I tend to find inspiration in everything else I do, whether that’s translation work or production jobs.

The gist is: we hope you’ll join next time, so we can share and make sense of things together by saying them out loud. For me, it really helps not to be trapped inside my own shmuggled brain sometimes.

Alright, class dismissed :)

Oh! Of course sent me a nice Substack that gets really deep into topics like creative cycles. It’s called by and why it’s important to know your habits. He said “And it helps us—perhaps—to arrange our lives to be in sync with our own unique cycles.” Inspired by this post, “Know your creative cycle”, I mapped out my currency creative process/cycle. My handwriting is strange and my drawings are bad! I know!

all photos are provided by Samuel Rhodes. If you are based in Tokyo and would like to contribute topics or be a guest host! or facilitate or anything! please email me (megkoiwai@gmail.com) so we can chat further x

3 things for this week are ;

• Postscript to an Open Marriage: On Lily Allen’s West End Girl by Jean Garnett. I enjoyed the takes on how open marriage is often gendered, “open marriage as a thing done by men to women rings a bell.”

• This 30 minute read essay on The Anti-Cosmetic Surgery Essay Every Woman by . A must read!!

• Oh! I guess it’s not a link but it’s a collection of links. Thought it will be nice to paste some salons or workshops that we were inspired by to do offline school. The offline club that seems pretty well-known, more about focusing on non-digital forms. Another worldly library, reading group and workshops. School of attention, based in Brooklyn dedicated to community study and paying radical human attention. MiuMiu also hosted their salon, inviting Sheila Heti, Jhumpa Lahiri, Claudia Durastanti.

Alright then. Go experience the world <3

*My favorite story was Sleeping Beauty. While I did think at the time, it was the scariest one ever… I hid behind the kitchen counter when it was Maleficent’s scene. This scene when the fairies decides to use their magic for Aurora’s birthday will always just be so magical.

When I met Sam and we had our first date, I went home, lay in bed with my eyes lit up, too many butterflies in my stomach, squeaking with joy, and completely head over heels with the connection I had suddenly found, I thought—finally. There’s the magic I always wanted.

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This seems regressive to say, nor is it fair to Sam, but over the course of officially dating Sam, I thought the hard, long work of finding a man had finally paid off. It isn’t healthy to think of him as a “payoff” after all the other men. He isn’t a prize or a token — he’s a person with real feelings. But that was in all honesty, one of the first thoughts that ruminated over my head. It would be a lie if I didn’t feel like a weight lifted off of my shoulders. I was just so exhausted and absolutely, catastrophically done with dating after failing for about a decade.

There it is, failing. As if two binary things should define the act of love : fail or success. It’s always been on my mind how women often treat a relationship or a marriage like a milestone. It’s not our fault that we’re wired to think this way. Our entire lives, we’re prepped like show ponies to get ready for our big day. At least in Japan, we’re told that if we go to a good school or get a good job, we can find a nice husband and build a good life for ourselves: to be a woman is a linear success story. Perhaps with the help of Disney princesses, I believed that I needed saving — that my life was miserable because I didn’t have a man. Every girl was saved by the bell; why couldn’t I be saved too? Magic made me believe in that.

I was so consumed by romanticism that I kept wanting something bigger, maybe it was a man but more importantly, I wanted love. I needed it. For years, I had been ashamed, even embarrassed, about not having a boyfriend at a certain age. I thought I was unlovable. I was convinced men only saw me as something they could pick up and leave whenever they wanted. I was embarrassed that no man had ever chosen me or wanted me as their girlfriend. And at the time, I understood love only as something passive, something only a man could give me. I didn’t even think about whether I loved my friends or myself — I didn’t know what love meant outside of romance. All I knew was that my love was reserved for men. Nothing was ever about what I wanted or what I felt. I was boy-crazy.

By the time I was 31, the same year I met Sam, I started to see the world entirely differently. I realized I didn’t need a man to be happy, and I felt that truth in my whole body. At the same time, with all my power, I was doing the conscious work to never be the girl who was saved because of a man. I had to take agency over my own life, not hand it to someone else. That wasn’t the woman I wanted to become. This was the time also when a lot of things have shifted for me, professionally and personally. I had to ask myself a lot of questions, which I rarely did. The biggest one being : who are you, Megumi, and what do you Megumi want?

The minute I started looking much closer to my surroundings, I saw love everywhere. It was like I was able to care for my family, friends and the creative community around me from scratch. It was a bit magical.

When I looked around, there was no man in sight but I was still so happy. That was empowering to me that I didn’t need to be wanted or taken by a boy. I have finally channeled a different kind of love for myself for the first time.

But then I met Sam in September, and I fell in love. Yes, I didn’t need a man, but having Sam in my life added to my happiness. He wasn’t there to fill something that was “missing.” He didn’t signal success or failure. He was just a person who I really, really ended up liking. I was already full of joy and I also absorbed his zesty energy. When I met him, I was truly, at my best.

In the best possible way, we were two romantics who fell in love, but being around him was comforting. I didn’t feel the things I used to feel before — the intimidation around men, the desperation for their attention or approval. He wasn’t just a lover; he was also a really really good person to be around.

So, when I read this catchy headlined article, I couldn’t relate to it at all. Is having a boyfriend embarrassing? Surely, we are asking the wrong questions.

This article, published by Vogue a couple weeks ago titled “Is having a boyfriend embarrassing now?” written by Chante Joseph took the internet thinkers by storm. Alas, I am probably the last person on the internet talking about it now.

TLDR ; having a boyfriend is not a flex anymore, and showing it off is embarrassing.

This essay’s thesis is that to simply put, having a boyfriend is embarrassing and in fact, showcasing your boyfriend online is much more embarrassing. Ah, I thought. I know these women. The writer in this essay is arguing that having a boyfriend now is actually embarrassing, but I think there’s some specificities that should have been mentioned.

I’m already seeing this take elsewhere as well, but having a boyfriend is not embarrassing, in fact, it shouldn’t be embarrassing. My experience with Sam is far from embarrassment. I think what we (1the online people) mean by embarrassing, is that “your boyfriend might be doing some embarrassing shit and that’s embarrassing for you.” I initially thought that this discourse online is empowering in some way. That women are calling each other in. The way the piece is structured is so we are calling each other in saying, “hey girls. We actually don’t need them (men) anymore.” We don’t need them for power, money, societal acknowledgement because traditional gender roles are starting to shift around, and as Joseph wrote “forced to reevaluate our blind allegiance to heterosexuality.”

The fact that some women are still wanting to date for these things to signal success as accomplishments and accolades, I think something needs to change there. Also if some women think it’s a “flex” to have a boyfriend, then either they are very young or emotionally immature (I’m sorry but it’s true). I would entertain the idea that if the laws still are like from centuries ago, women did not in fact have the choice. Women were not allowed to go out alone at night unaccompanied, marriage gave women a stable path to social and financial security. Women were heavily policed without a companion. In today’s context, women are still policed in some areas and places, but by and large, with marriage or dating, it’s not a necessity anymore but it’s just a choice.

With that, I agree that it is 2embarrassing for that girl to be dating a man, willingly that’s pretty terrible and to be blunt, banal.

But also, aside from the free-will! and women have a choice! stuff, before we start politicizing our teleology, I’m more interested in the philosophical, and the interconnection of people who reach for love. The statement that dating a man is embarrassing is an unimaginative place to live and I don’t want to be there. I understand the embarrassment that comes when a woman is posting only about her boyfriend constantly, and it feels a bit eye-rolly, that I understand. It feels fake, performative, unoriginal. In modern parlance, not a “girl’s girl” if you will. Those platforms though, are designed for those women to thrive. We know this. The algorithm rewards them if we hate watch or hate engage in something.

We live in an absolute image heavy, image conscious and image-centered world. I understand people’s psyche that they want to show their significant other to tell the rest of the world that they are happy. It’s what we are told: if she has a man, she’s happy, she succeeded. It could be true in some elements, but that shouldn’t be the entire plot. I feel this when I’m with Sam. My life is content now but it’s not because I have a boyfriend. It’s everything combined — having a boyfriend is not the most interesting thing about me. That shouldn’t be where we settle, we should want to do better. I used to think women who have boyfriends won the game, that they are ahead of the curve. No. Finding a man will not complete you, they will add to your multifaceted personality — having a man shouldn’t be the narrative we look for as success.

I think this article would work if we encouraged people to ask the questions like “So, with all the power and choice I have now, why do I want to date? Why do I want to date that person? What do I want from a relationship?” These questions feel more human and realistic. It involved self work and self questioning that will probably ultimately leave us with a better person. Not to state that having a boyfriend is embarrassing.

Call me crazy but it’s not embarrassing to want a boyfriend or to want love.

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Then as I write this, it sinks in. Women’s character or behavior shouldn’t be judged based on how the man is behaving … That should be the man’s job to better himself and do better and his friends should call him out on that. But yet here we are pointing the fingers at women when your man is giving the rest of us the “ick.”

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Things that I think you would like;

Reads

• Zadie Smith: Can You Be Serious And Seriously Glamorous? Love it love it love. I just love her so much. Have you all ever thought about “looking the part?” becoming a freelancer, this was a big one for me.

• This is a 2014 article (lol) but it was linked to the above one and I need this book so bad. Sheila Heti!!!, Heidi Julavits and Leanne Shapton as the writers and editors, there’s this booked called Women in clothes. Miranda July, Lena Dunham (!!!) and so much more also contributed. This book “is a 500-page compilation of essays, interviews, art, and photographs that explore the psychology of personal style.”

• I have now become a paid sub - and I’m really enjoying the content so far. I’m in the thick of lure now. Some reads by her I liked are On evolving in your creative life, A book that was recommend in this piece Journal of a solitude that I would love to read. her Substack gut-check comment section is so good. I’ve been feeling a type of way too with Substack…. the chase, the trendy pieces, the links ….

• Inside Uniqlo’s Quest for Global Dominance it’s a long one, it took me an hour to read lol but I sort of enjoyed it, at least the first part. “Uniqlo is kind of like Everlane without the moral superiority and H&M without the ickiness.” I find this quote fascinating because if I was a brand, I wouldn’t want this quote lol (also Uniqlo is icky no?)

• The wild, weird, and mind-boggling fertility paradox of entering your thirties on written by It’s such a honest reflection on going through the ebbs and ebbs and some flows of deciding what’s best for your body.

• Gwyneth’s Second Coming: “I’m Much Easier On Myself, I Would Say” I like celebrity profiles and this one is a nice read. it is unfair that she is a butt of a joke always but has a profitable business… maybe it’s the idea that she’s selling i’m usually not on board with.

• Sometimes, I see good things on the Notes section and this “CV of failures” was one of them

Recipes

• I have been pretty busy in the kitchen! My current on repeat is Soondubu. I honestly need to go to a Korean woman teaching me Korean cooking, it’s just that… I love it. This soondubu recipe is from Cafe Maddy. It’s a simple simple simple one person dinner - I make more so I can keep eating it for 2 days or so for lunch and dinner. Added even rice or noodles <3

• Another routinely made dish is this congee with homemade mushroom “XO” sauce. This jar of mushroom is just that sort of sweet, spicy, warm thing I need in every dipping moment. It’s also made from frozen rice, which makes it so much yummier - by the one and only for any veggies dish. I need to get her book because I’ve also made her chili crisp before and it was divine.

• I just really love anything by Hailee Catalano. These chewy dates and molasses cookie is a winner for this time of the season.

• I also made a lazy daisy cake and DIDN'T take a photo. WOWEEE. Anyways, it was inspired by this tiktok, a woman making all the top 50 NYT cooking recipes and I thought it looked really good…. until I saw how much sugar there was in it. It is so so yummy, but my god. It’s a sweet treat!

• I saw this Apple pie baklava recipe that I was so tempted to make for some thanks giving parties this week, but when in Japan, finding phyllo pastry sheets are….impossible lol Also inspired by on

Music (rare!)

• A good album by Gui Borrato when writing or doing anything focused work without lyrics. A recommendation by Sam.

Podcast!

• I feel like this sort of true crime podcast sort of died down, but Beth’s Dead was pretty interesting, although I just listened to it because it happened to the podcasters that I regularly listen to!!! Also hosted by Arm Chair expert’s Monica.

• I have been loving, absolutely loving this new podcast I started called Pen Palls hosted by two women I didn’t know also existed on Substack! written by is such a beautiful collection of essays - who also monetizes off of essay writing, which I need to look into really. Their talk on just regular writer zigs and zagging and how they need to pitch agents, getting an agent, writing a book, discipline — everything really is so inspiring.　

Perhaps this will do for this week xx

I then headed to the perfume section, and that’s when I found myself doing something unbecoming of me. The girl helping me with the scents had a staff badge with their name that read Himawari—sunflower in Japanese. At that moment, I found her name so calming. Even now, when I think about it, I feel warm imagining her parents thoughtfully choosing a name she would carry for the rest of her life. It felt hopeful.

While I was purchasing my somewhat expensive perfume, I said, “Sorry, I couldn’t help but notice your badge, but your name is so nice.” She replied, “Oh, thank you so much. People always say it’s a unique name.”

It was a rare moment in my adult life to interact with a stranger like that. In Japan, some might say I was intruding. We, Japanese, tend to mind our own business—don’t get involved with others, because you never know if they might turn out to be a crazy person. But, when I go back to America, I do enjoy small talk. People asking how my day is going, or someone telling me the entire story about a previous customer they absolutely hated — it’s fun to sort of tap into the most random, mindless conversation. Not every conversation has to be meaningful and radical. The irrelevance of these brief conversations feels, above all, personal and I enjoy it.

The thing is, I just am never that girl who starts the small talk.

*video below is irrelevant to the story - it’s just an insanely good 360 susnet video.

I was at the nail salon just two days ago, and I had an opportunity to be that girl: to start small talk. The salon had a TV playing in the background, broadcasting the day’s headlines. I was completely absorbed—partly because I rarely watch live television since I don’t have one at home, and partly because the nailist’s astute commentary throughout the evening was just really entertaining.

Watching the evening news in real time with a group of strange women is an experience. You can practically hear everyone’s brains crunch when anything political comes on. The silence becomes so loud that you can almost figure out each person’s political beliefs without them saying a word. Currently, our boy Donald Trump is visiting Japan, and our recently elected prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, is dominating the headlines jointly. The nailist noticed Takaichi on the screen and said to her customer while buffing nails, “What a relief to finally have a woman prime minister, right?” By any metric, having a woman prime minister isn’t a win for this country. She is, in fact, vigorously conservative but what do I know — I was just there to eavesdrop.

Though, the nailist surprised me that evening. She was an erudite in her own way. Unbeknownst to her, she solved a mystery I have had for the past five years.

While Donald Trump was in Japan, he “addressed” the unresolved issue of the Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea in the ’70s and ’80s. He stood beside Takaichi and the families of the abducted and made some in-solidarity remarks. Takaichi and the family members were wearing small blue ribbon pins. Similar to the pink ribbon initiative, the blue ribbon is a public movement in Japan showing support for the families of citizens abducted by North Korea. The blue symbolizes the Sea of Japan, expressing hope that the abductees will one day cross the sea and return home.

During this segment of the news, the nailist said, “Oh, I was once given that blue ribbon on the street by a very strange man near Yutenji Station.” My ears perked up. Yutenji Station is my neighborhood station, and I was curious how it happened. “The man was strange because he was wearing a white helmet that said ‘Nihon-gun (Japanese Army).’ He’s also very skinny. He wears a soccer uniform, and one day, he just came up to me and handed me that blue ribbon pin,” she explained to her customer. She said this happened about two years ago — and I was thrilled because I know this man.

I always found him strange. He’s always around. I haven’t seen him recently, but he is very thin and is always wearing the same thing as the girl said. The blue soccer uniform, knee-high socks, a fanny pack and a backpack, the white helmet resembles either a construction worker wear or a part of an earthquake kit. The thinness did alarm me often. In the summer, he wears shorts and it’s obvious that his legs are like pinstripe thin. You can tell that he’s an older gentleman, and I always just assumed that he’s probably not well. But with that said, he was always walking with stride and at least from the looks of it, he seemed like he had no care in the world. I just never said anything to him, even though the urge was always there, I never had the confidence to go up to a stranger like that. However, I did always wonder: what is his story?

Then, the nailist explains to her very attentive customer that she had then Googled him and he was easy to find on the internet. Apparently, he’s quite famous, and dare I say, there seems to be a harmless, warm kind of cheering for him whenever people find him. Sort of like a rare pokemon. From my limited research on the man, he still works at a real estate company. He buys the blue ribbon pin badges with his own money—each costing 500 yen—and hands them out to people. This is a detail the nailist also told her customer. She then said, “He buys them on his own. It’s not a cheap thing, but he had so much in his bag. I thought it was pretty admirable of him. That’s how you spread awareness right?”

Through his out-there uniform, he hopes people will notice him so that his message reaches more people. Who knew… in his own way, he’s an activist. I was never approached by him, even though we’ve crossed paths multiple times; it seems the way it works is that you have to approach him.

I wanted to say to the nailist so bad at that time, omg I know the man you are talking about and he was such a mystery to me but now I know! In the end, I’m writing a newsletter in detail about the interaction I didn’t have.

I wasn’t regretful about not speaking up at the moment, but I felt like a gauche woman. Why Megumi. Were you embarrassed? Were you shy? Or did you think that making conversation would have led to some awkward silence afterwards and you didn’t want that? Is it that serious? Should life be that serious? Does it even matter what the other person will think? You might never meet this person ever again? Does it matter? Should life really be this serious all the time?

I think about this a lot: I wish I was that girl. A girl who can just go up to people, spontaneously, and start a conversation. I wish I was that girl who can take life a little less seriously in the best possible way, swaying to the music from her headphones while waiting for the crosswalk light. I wish I was that girl who, at the end of a conversation say, “Yeah, but who cares!” (Apparently, Gwyneth Paltrow is that girl.) I wish I was that girl who can go up to someone at the train platform and say, “I love that jacket! Where is it from?” Instead, I’m the girl who tries to find logos or other clues, so I can look them up later on my phone or ask ChatGPT.

A type of life I aspire to live these days—as I grow older, blossom in new friendships, and discover philosophies that inspire me to do better—is to be that girl: a little pizzazz, a little get-silly-with-it attitude. I was recently listening to a podcast with comedian Robby Hoffman (who I now love). Surprisingly, while it’s a silly little comedy podcast, it was also profoundly moving. Robby is precisely that girl (I’m not sure of Robby’s pronouns exactly, but you get the gist). She talks about growing up with ten siblings in a Hasidic Jewish family and reflects on how much self-love she had even as a child. “I just always felt special,” she says. Later, as a teenager, when she realized she was gay, she describes that moment with humor, maybe society was mad at her for being gay, but she was convinced that “Hashem probably fucks with me.” She never seemed to have questioned her self worth. She knew what she was and she had no business changing that fact. The sureness was striking. She imagines Hashem thinking, “Ah, what are you going to do? You’re gay.”

Robby tells the story in such a funny way that what seemed like just a funny story struck me as a story of self-conviction. It was silly, but it couldn’t have been more real. The idea that God was like, “Ah, fuck it. What can I do? You’re gay!” is hilarious. That kind of enlightenment felt incredibly freeing. I won’t be surprised if Robby says that she feels at peace with herself now. It shows. That kind of clarity and poise is something I aspire to become. I would love to reach a place where I’m free of all nonsensical, overthinking thoughts, and can simply be—me, myself, Megumi—and along the way, to be that girl.

This section is for if you want to read/watch/listen to some good shit.

Reads

• Is ghosting inevitable? by Kyle Chayka

• The Six-Seven panic by The Cut - if you don’t know what 6-7 is, don’t google it, just feel it and get it.

• On Bringing the Novels of Mizuki Tsujimura to English Readers by Yuki Tejima runs the famous instagram account @booknerdtokyo and I’ve been a fan of hers from a far for a while. This piece I just stumbled upon on LitHub is a nice read. Mainly just always so floored by her enthusiasm with wanting to translate something to share to the world. I also read her interview piece with Emi Yagi on her website. This comment struck me.

EY: When I was writing my previous book, Diary of a Void, I didn’t go into it thinking, I’m going to write a feminist novel. I simply thought, What would happen if a woman lied about being pregnant? and as I wrote, the feminist theme emerged. Though writing about a young woman in Japanese society today without incorporating any feminist elements would be unnatural.

• Zadie Smith has a new book out — a collection of essays, which I must read — and I’ve been seeing her around on podcasts. This piece she wrote The art of the impersonal essay was just one of those really good essays that scratches the writer brain in you. Can’t recommend it enough.

• and is doing a 2 girls 1 book series and while I was cruising around, I found essay on wanting to read less titled On reading versus living.

• It’s a while back now, but I saw that interviewed Deborah Levy since there’s a new movie out based on Hot Milk. A book that has been on my shelf since last summer that I picked up in Portland and haven’t read yet but hear great things about.

Listen

• I so enjoyed the New Yorker radio with Zadie Smith. Always so much wisdom.

• I’ve already recommended it above, but Robby Hoffman on Endless Honeymoon was worth my time.

Watch

• I watched “The Perfect Neighbor” on Netflix. Usually not my thing to watch, but all I can say about Florida is that… girl why. It’s pretty sad so brace yourself if watching!

• Tokyo Animas (2022) It’s a short film available on Youtube. Tosh — now someone I can call a friend —directed and wrote it. If you know the man personally, it all makes perfect sense. As he introduces the film, Tokyo being a place of “a place where the things in the foreground fall to the back,” is such a perfect way to describe the peculiar and absurd things that happen day-to-day in Tokyo.

Recipes

• Ever since I wrapped up my big on-going project, I have been cooking up some yummy things. Exhibit A is this chicken noodle soup. I’ve been enjoying Katie (@babyamago on tiktok). Her aesthetic commitment to a food gathering is impeccable. also another soup edition by Katie, her Chili was divine, making another one very soon to perfect the spice levels for my taste.

• I made a one person tiramisu and it was honestly the best decision I made this month. Recipes provided by @bakedbybenji !

Love - megumi x

From December 2015 to February 2016, I backpacked around Europe on my own. I spent Christmas in London and went out with a group of girls I was sharing a hostel room with. It was Christmas Eve, London was decorated with Chirsmas lights, cold and we wore Santa hats to the club. I was backpacking so I didn’t have a ‘going-out’ outfit. I wore my high-rise black stretchy jeans from Urban Outfitters, a black turtle neck, and my Doc Martens — feeling like a true Londoner without the ripped tights. Alas, I was way too casual. The rest of the girls had a ‘going-out’ outfit and wore tight mini dresses and heels. We ended up somewhere near the Oxford Circus station, surrounded by tons of other tourists. The club was packed with people eager to find someone for a Christmas hang (or bang). I felt out of place, undesirable. I felt left behind by the girl's forwardness. I was shy, too reserved and my outfit didn’t help either. A setting that was so outside of my comfort zone, made me feel like I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t sexy enough, wasn’t forward enough — just not enough. I did go out in Tokyo, similar to this setting, but the air was different. It was filled with desire and lust, a type of enthusiasm I was “too Japanese” for.

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My whole life, my Japaneseness was either too much or not enough. But, it didn’t matter whether I believed that I was one or the other. Strangers will let me know how they felt about it and I’m just living in their world.

Since Sanseito, the far-right nationalist political party led by Sohei Kamiya, took a hold of the media narrative during the election in July with its “Japanese-first” agenda — I’ve been thinking more and more about what Japaneseness is: to me, to us, and to the rest of the world. Why are we so obsessed with it?

Sanseito was shocking, at least to those of us with more liberal views on things. It felt like the same tactic brands or celebrities use when they don’t have much to offer, so they resort to shock value, thinking it’ll keep the audience in a chokehold (exhibit A (here for the comment section). Sanseito throws out lines like “Don’t destroy Japan further!!” or “Protect Japanese people first!” And the entire time, I’m sitting there like “Guys, let me in on the scoop — What exactly are you so afraid of!”

Sanseito’s strategy is dubious ; they (falsely) claim that consuming flour and sugar has “contaminated” us and that is causing cancer (Yes, this was an actual doctor saying this in a speech). Kamiya’s use of the word “chon”, a pejorative term for people from the Korean Peninsula in his speech was a thoughtless tactic meant to appeal to voters who share his values. Sanseito also hosted many propaganda seminars in the suburbs during the election to feed in people’s fears. I came across a comment on an article, and one woman said she feels scared just walking to her neighborhood convenience store because there are “so many foreigners.” It’s important to note: she, like many others, feels afraid — even though there is no reporting that immigrants are causing any harm. In fact, probably none, as far as I’ve seen.

It all bothered me a lot, just as it did with my friends and others online. It bothered me that people could be so gullible, so unsuspecting of them. I hate how easily people are susceptible to tiktok, social media and their algorithms. It bothered me that some Japanese people were attacking differences instead of celebrating them. In fact, I keep asking the same question over and over again : why are Japanese people so convinced that Japan is the greatest country ever? What’s this narrative the West keeps fixating on about Japan? Every summer, temperatures keep rising while the government barely responds to climate change. Sexual harassment in companies, left and right. Low wages. Overwork is so severe that depression and suicide are constant concerns.

All of this fucking bothers me.

At this moment in time, I don’t think Japaneseness is based on anything profound anymore. It’s not something radical that the West likes to label us as. Instead, it feels like an ideal we project onto ourselves —something we passed along by observing other like-minded Japanese people, over years, decades, and centuries. After all, we’ve kept so much within the country for so long that I wonder if, in that isolation, we have grown dull and bored. Our minds were stagnant. Understandably, for much of our history, all we witnessed was the next succession to the crown and clans fighting each other for land and power. There’s this saying I heard from Sam recently that has been ruminating through my mind a lot . “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” This echoes the themes of Aristotle’s work or Existentialists like Sartre’s that we are social animals and our character is developed through community and friendship. And that our being is constantly shaped by others. It’s not unsurprising to me that Japanese people find similarities comforting.

In the Meiji period, there was a time that Japan was terrified with the West’s overwhelming influence and the possibility that it might redefine what Japaneseness meant. Oh how history repeats itself. Young people started wearing collared shirts and hats, and many went abroad to study. In Junichiro Tanizaki’s In praise of shadows, he talks about the traditional Japanese aesthetics through shadows and imperfections, contrasting it with modern Western ideals. In part, he recalls hating visits to the dentist who had just returned from America, because the office was filled with gleaming, modern equipment. He preferred a dentist with a more antiquated feel. Although he admits, not wanting to be seen with equipment that is too outdated. He summarizes this anecdote to argue that Japan wasted a lot by importing so much from the industrialized West. Perhaps, medical equipment and facilities might have developed into something less shiny but more harmonious with the zashiki style (tatami rooms) if modern medicine had evolved within Japan. Aesthetically speaking, people were eager to preserve Japaneseness forever.

I do respect and admire Japan’s spirit when it comes to protecting culture, artifacts and ideologies from long ago. Some Japanese thinkers often criticize the West for scrapping the old and constantly making something shiny and new, whereas in Japan, we devote our time (too much time, maybe) to preservation and nurture. And this, while it sounds beautiful and profound in theory, is exactly what stagnates our progression with real life consequences; Hanko (Personal seals for important documents) have been working fine, so let’s just keep using them. Let’s keep abortion a criminal crime because, hey, not much has changed in 100 years. Let’s just keep enforcing students to do shukatsu since it’s been a tradition and we wouldn’t want to ruffle any feathers.

What bothers me, especially with social media and its overreaction to so-called “Japanese things,” is that people are making a moodboard of images they believe capture what Japan looks or feels like, and in doing so reinforces a narrative that Japan should look and feel this way — when in reality, our day-to-day lives are very far from that ideal moodboard. Life is not a fucking moodboard and we are the ones who have to live with the real life shitty, boring stuff. Also, Japan has fueled this misconception on ourselves too by promoting national branding through the Cool Japan initiative.

I believe that Japaneseness was just once a harmless vibe, a group of people finding beauty in the most mundane things. This, I think, could apply to any ethnicity in any primitive period of time, though perhaps the Japanese wanted to perfect it a little further. In retrospect, I can see the Japanese philosophy of silence, reflection and nurturing as a great formula for anyone seeking respite from a noisy, chaotic, and algorithm-driven life. I can see how those ideas could now be read as a kind of “no plot, just vibes” aesthetic.

When I hear stories from the heian period, I really believed that Japanese people were sensitive and paid insane attention to detail and all of this came from a real place. That to me is very poetic. Like not in a meme-kind of a way, but observing life through the smallest things were actually meaningful. The book Shōnagon wrote called The pillow book (ah my Japanese history classes) is described in Kyle Chayka’s longing for less as, “it's full of minutiae that become poetic in their ordinariness."

I wonder if the great-Japan-ideal is just based on a feeling of yearning. Somehow, people who believe in a pure form of Japan have convinced themselves that the current state is messy, and the days when it was just us —surrounded by like-minded Japanese people —were somehow more peaceful and straightforward. But I don’t want to live in a place where messiness is considered bad or unpolished. That’s exactly what Sanseito and others are trying to do: define Japaneseness for the rest of us. As the photographer Martin Parr who takes documentary-style photography said, “finding beauty in the trashy,” feels like a place I’d rather live.

There’s just too much that has changed to keep saying, Japanese people are [insert whatever stereotype here]. I used to feel very trapped by this idea of Japaneseness, conditioned and taught by the environment I grew up in. I genuinely had to unlearn what is a right amount of Japaneseness, if there ever was one. The romanticization of Japaneseness feels even louder now because of social media and Japan-centered content making. In fact, I think a lot of the social media depiction of Japan and Sanseito’s idea of Japaneseness are one and the same : singular, stereotypical, controlling — and to that I say with all my sensible Japan made heart, to please stop.

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Read📕

• How creative retreats became the new girls' trip for women seeking authentic escapes written by . I just know that I’m a prime target for creative retreats but I often find them a little out of my budget so I think maybe it’s cheaper to just book my own trip and do the creative stuff on my own? Has anyone else joined a retreat before? Very much thinking about my 2026 summer plans now. lol

• How AI, Healthcare, and Labubu Became the American Economy Very much enjoyed this by . Labubu’s errrrr

• Speaking of labubu’s —Only Fads: A Culture (and Economy) of Labubu by David Marx was so good! This quote is bang on.

  If fads are narratives as much as products, they need to be starved of engagement, as well. We haven't figured out how to do this yet

• I also enjoyed this piece by Explaining Publishing to Non-Author Friends is Like a Sitcom

• My friend Carina has a beautiful and thoughtful newsletter called Hey How Are You and she recently interviewed another fellow friend Amina! 9:4 - Two Writers, Infinite Butterflies | Interview with Amina Mobley It’s one of those pieces that make you want to write, write and write some more.

• This love letter to Drake on the Paris Review written by a fellow Astray teacher and friend Benji is a beautiful compound of words.

• This is a repeat recipe in my house, but an Ottolenghi that’s so low-effort is like right up my alley.

• Elizabeth Gilbert’s Latest Epiphanies

• in relation to the above, I loved reading piece on Why I'm dreading Elizabeth Gilbert's new memoir

Watched and listened :

I got this from bits archive and was absolutely stunned. It’s just so devastating so proceed with caution. More the reason I want to read Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver!

• I wonder if I already recommended this episode by Search Engine called what does it feel like t believe in God was such a good re-listen. I loved the message of believing in god is like “meaning-making” of life. I think we can apply this to everything in life.

• Also watched The Studio directed by Seth Rogan. It was funny and I think they were echoing some good concerns around film making but it fell very flat for me at the end.

Ok well thanks for reading as always x

I had a magical moment to myself this morning in yoga class. I started to cry right before we started our practice. We were in fish pose and there was lofi-music playing in the background. I’m typically not for “bouncy music” during yoga, but today, I didn’t mind it. I felt an irresistible sadness that just rippled through my heart and body. It came out of nowhere — the kind of sadness you just have to feel — which often happens unannounced. I’ve been feeling overwhelmed with my health and body recently. I think the sadness just came from feeling not in control of my body when in reality, all that I’m doing — very rigorously — is to control it. It’s affecting my body dysmorphia and overall body image. I’ve been feeling fat, especially around my belly. I have gained weight and maybe I am at my second most heaviest now. My clothes that I bought two years ago are not fitting me the same way it used to.

I also feel like my body isn’t receiving insulin as I want it to. Whenever I check my CGM, it’s slightly too high because I didn’t dose enough insulin before I fed myself. Sometimes when I shoot myself with insulin around my stomach area, I seem to accidentally prick a blood vessel and tiny amounts of blood comes out too. The outcome of that is I have a big bruise around my stomach area. It happened last night and my stomach is currently covered in bruises and scars and I treat that as failure. I have plenty of ruthless things to say about my body. Where’s the benevolence? Where’s the grace?

I’ve been going to gyms and pilates classes and I tell myself, I’m back at the gym because it’s good for my health — when in reality, I probably started going because I want to lose weight. And we all know, those two things are not synonymous.

I forgot where I heard this recently, but there’s a stark difference in how we treat ourselves and others: the level of care just isn’t the same. I would never speak the way I do to myself to others. She should go to the gym because she has a belly hanging out of her tank top. I would just never.

In 2025 — and to be fair, I’ve felt this way ever since I’ve had social media — the world is filled with dichotomy, and we all just live in it. I feel like my problems aren’t something I should say out loud when there’s war and a genocide happening in Gaza. It’s like that moment when Kourtney says to Kim when she loses her diamond earnings in the ocean, “Kim, there are children dying.” Two things can be true at once. We flick through Instagram stories and one moment a friend is posting their euro summer pics with gelato and in another, someone reposted a story about a pregnant woman in Gaza getting shot in the stomach. The child dies, but the mother survives — though her uterus is removed, leaving her never to have children again. This is the world that we live in, an era that we live, the culture that we live in. We have ailed the state of the world and I’m a part of it.

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ChatGpt and its personality defect

This is a screenshot I took this morning when I was asking about some bits and bobs about my T1D. I was feeling overwhelmed and an aversion towards my body. I wanted instantaneous comfort and I, like many, turned to a machine for it. After a vulnerable confession, all that I got was a fucking shitty abdominal map. No comment on whatever I said. In the recent GPT-5 update, the machine presented itself with less personality and with more machinery gusto. The initial feedback from users was “too reserved and professional” sounding. In settings, you can choose your choice of “personality” for your daily conversations with it. Now, based on the feedback, it has updated its “default personality warmer and more familiar.” Do we feel anything about this? Should we be concerned that people are actually saying, “I lost a friend overnight.” Should we care? Do I care?

My stomach

I’ve been having a very unloving relationship with my stomach this summer and summer is not the time to feel hostile towards your tummy. It’s bruised and I have surgery marks from last year’s IVF complication surgery. It’s yellow, purple, and there’s red dots from the shots. It’s going through it and I’m in the thick of it.

I should probably wear a longer length shirt because my stomach is out.

I am the queen of crop-ts and tanks. I love wearing stomach revealing clothes in the summer. It’s cute and it makes me feel like I’m back in my PINK teenage years. (Word on the street is, girls in SoHo are wearing those yoga pants that have rhinestone PINK on the back of the butt?)

I have always been unkind to my body and body image. It feels a bit antiquated to care about your body image in 2025. It feels quite boomer of me to care about that sort of stuff, doesn’t it? Body positivity? Is it still alive? Is that what we believe in as a culture now? Apparently, skinny is back and we like skinny women — once again we live in a place where tiny skirts and tiny everything is in (even boobs). But in fairness, I don’t think it ever left.

What should I do my dear tummy. I love eating so I have to keep poking needles at you, even though you seem quite worn out from all the injections and the trauma I put you through last year. It wasn’t my fault but it feels like it because you are right there where I can see you and you remind me of it everyday. Your skin is hardening because I’ve been attacking you daily with countless needles and I haven’t rotated body parts to inject in a while. Don’t worry tummy. I have a shitty stomach map that ChatGPT gave me. You will soon have peace.

Gung-ho

/ɡʌŋˈhəʊ/　

adjective

unthinkingly enthusiastic and eager, especially about taking part in fighting or warfare.

I’ve heard recently on a podcast two British women speaking about going on a survival show hypothetically, and one woman said “Oh yeah, she’s gung ho. She will definitely survive.” It’s one of those English terms that I find ridiculous. Laissez faire, ennui, précis, je ne sais quoi and zeitgeist are the others to name a few.

navel-gazing in the train

It was midday on a Tuesday. I was on the train heading back to the office from going to the doctor’s office. A salary man — i know this because he was wearing a suit — had a little baby strapped around him holding a diaper bag of some sort. It was the strangest scenery. Afterall, it was midday on a Tuesday. My instant thought was to give this man a place to sit. He was probably pooped from the hot day, this poor man! But hold on. What if I don’t give him this seat? What if he can have a taste of what it means to be a mother and not a part-time dad for once! What if! He has a taste of women’s medicine. I was knee deep in navel gazing territory. I felt very convinced that by not giving this man a seat to sit that he will learn a few things about inequalities of parenthood and gender roles. Then, I caught myself. Surely, this isn’t feminism. We should all be equally caring for each other if one has a baby — no matter the gender! Seconds later after many people got off of the train and empty seats were everywhere, he never took a seat. I guess it’s more cumbersome to sit with a baby, especially when it’s doing that little bouncy thing with the feet.

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I have a couple recommendations I would love to share this week:

Some readings first! 📕

• Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

  I don’t know what to feel about this book. I finally finished it! Since I’m juggling multiple at the moment, but I might not like this book so much. As sisters or chapters divided by characters to deep dive into their lives, Mongrel by Hanako Footman did it for me so much more. I found a few things in Blue Sisters very uncompleted. Then I had a listen to the Shameless girlies interviewing her! and the Weirdos book club covered the book too so I had to tune in. As the book club goes, it seems like I was on the same page as them.

• How the Israeli Right Explains the Aid Disaster It Created by Issac Chotiner. this was recommended by and it’s such a devastating and frustrating read but crucial to understand where the media narrative is coming from.

• Are You Experiencing Posting Ennui? by Kyle Chayka I recommended something written by Kyle Chayka before but I like his writing and ideas. Also he loves the word ennui, I’m sure and I bet he wanted credit for the Inside Out 2 character. Currently reading his The longing for less for a bookclub I created with Sam lol

• I Teach Creative Writing. This Is What A.I. Is Doing to Students. This one was recommended by and on their podcast and I found it a good read. Although, I already am on the side that AI is not ever going to replace art, imo. The moral and ethical issues surrounded around using AI and is an interesting thing to look into and this article reminded me of this piece by Carly Ayres. So good this one.

• I read this piece (Is pilates political?) and thought by did a much better job writing about the pilates culture and our obsession with lean looks. also now known as luxe lean!

• I really enjoyed this read by Is she pretty, or is she just white? As I am currently battling with my body image and overall vanity stuff, it was a critical read.

• Why Substack's new valuation means a monopoly is brewing if you don’t want to leave Substack, maybe don’t read it lol It’s important information to know, especially if you are making money off the platform and I’m just so upset these days with the Notes algorithm and how it has become yet just another social media-esque platform, just like that.

  Listens: 🎧

• I’ve shared this on Notes too — but who knew that Theo Von will have one of the most informational guest on to talk about Gaza and what’s happening on the ground. It’s so precious and so important to have a listen.

• Just sneaking into a little friend podcast is so nice! I enjoyed the last episode of sentimental in the city pod with Dolly and Caroline. I loved the observation Caroline made about the behind the scenes of SAT and the writers. What makes the show, the show is what’s happening behind the scenes and who is making the art.

recipes : 🍴

Oh I have been cooking!

• Hailee Catalano is one of my favorite Instagram chefs, and this avocado cucumber salad is prime summer hit

• I’ve seen this tiktoker around (@itslizmiu) and tried her recipe for crispy potatoes! very delicious!

• I made this very easy black bean bowl — thinking about the fat, carb, vitamin intakes and I felt like this one was pretty easily achievable.

• I wasn’t aware of Alexis deBoschnek but she seems like another woman I can get behind. This butter tofu miso stir fry over rice was yummm!

Why then goodbye and thank you for reading x

Megumi