“The particulars of new places grabbed me and held me, the sweep of new coasts, cold, lovely, dawns. The world was incomprehensibly large, and there was still so much to see. Yes, I got sick sometimes of being an expatriate, always ignorant, on the outside of things, but I didn’t…

A glimpse into life in Tokyo through the smallest of moments. — Monday 7:47am An elbow in your side, one resting on the side of your head, and your face pressed into the glass. The fans that line the ceiling do their best but are no match for the humid air that swirls through each carriage. Those lucky enough to get seats do their…

“Hey Chris, hope you’re doing well! How’s Japan?”. This, or some variation of this, is a message I have received numerous times since my arrival in Japan, and always struggled to answer. How do you condense an entire country into one sentence, let alone the one word people are often…

When you step off the plane into a country for the first time, your senses are assaulted with stimuli previously unbeknownst to you. Signs in a language you don’t understand fill your vision, indistinguishable scents waft past your nose, your skin prickles from the touch of a new climate. For…