// Picture from my trip to NYC back in November 2014. I ate a lot of Japanese food and had a blast.

People won’t take action until the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of change.

Question: How many Canadian things can you fit into one post? A: A lot. Ottawa, Montreal, a cottage in the middle of nowhere, Vancouver, Niagara Falls and Toronto.

(If you are ever in Vancouver and want real Japanese food, check out the restaurant simply called “Izakaya” on Davis street. I had nama-kaki, delicious sushi and a fancy tonkatsu-tempura-plate.)

(Made with Mextures, Tangent and Fragment.)

I miss this place so much I could not look at these pictures for the past months. I finally decided to go though all the pictures from the past six months, and I found the rest of the pictures I took when I went to Okinawa and Zamami.

I have been so busy this summer I can hardly remember anything but working, but looking at the pictures, I realized I was more successful than I first thought when it came to enjoying the time I did have. Between working 50+ hours pr week split into an internship and a part time job, I did find time to travel, eat lots of delicious food and drink my fair share of awamori, nihonshu and beer. In retrospect, I did… enough. I need to learn to stop and enjoy the moment. I was never an expert in that area.

Above; The road down to one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever visited, Furuzamami beach on Zamami island, 1.5 hours with ferry from Naha, the capital of Okinawa, a 4 hour flight south-west from Tokyo. The next time I go there I will get an underwater case for my camera, because the water with all the coral and tropical fish looked absolutely unreal. Spending the day on the beach with local beer was just what I needed.

The village on Zamami island consists of around 500 people, and they have beautiful and funny little gardens outside their houses. I loved the Totoro-themed driveway.

You are allowed to bring dead coral back with you, and I found this beautiful piece washed up on the beach.

(Tokyo, June, 2014) I am obsessing. Make meaning when there doesn’t seem to be any. I am puttering away, feeling like a little choo-choo train without any breaks. I want to go home.

What a strange year. I am immensely grateful, but I am lost for words. I read a mundane blog post about five things you wish you wouldn’t have done when you are ten years older. One of the points said to not micromanage. It did not say how not to do it. I am wondering if I am hard wired to get my shit perfected down to the very tiny, nitty-gritty details. You do too much, please too many and fail miserably and disappoint your surroundings and yourself.

I spend too much time on the Marunouchi-line. I don’t have any pictures of it because it is so crammed I can not even lift my iPhone to snap a picture. Also, my iPhone is the Japanese model, meaning it is impossible to shut off the shutter sound when I take pictures.

Blame the chikan, those pervs, taking so many up skirt pictures of Japanese school girls that an entire nation of people are condemned to mandatory shutter sounds.

A lot of the things I used to find odd about this county I no longer think about. I have stopped taking pictures of the fancy toilet seats with a ton of options to clean both your front and your behind while taking a dump, excuse my language. I no longer raise my head to gaze at the crazy Harajuku-girls with their multi-colored hair and over the top dresses. And I didn’t even raise an eyebrow when a man, nicely dressed in a fairly fancy suit sat across from me on the Fukutoshin-line, shirt covered in blood and holding his hand over the left part of scalp to stop the extensive bleeding. Neither did anyone else. This city makes you passive, it is hard to explain, but “none of my business” have taken on a life of its own here.