Day-off Diaries: Autumn in Tokyo, Japan

Autumn has always felt like a gentle exhale. Not an ending, not quite a beginning—just a pause long enough to notice your own breathing. It’s the season that gives permission to slow down, to move deliberately, to finally wrap myself in the thick wool sweaters and coats that spend most of the year untouched in the perpetual heat of home. There is comfort in that weight, in fabric meant to protect rather than perform. It signals a shift, subtle but undeniable, away from endurance and toward intention.

Unexpected Detour in Maastricht

What was supposed to be a simple two-and-a-half-hour train ride stretched into a weary four-hour crawl to Maastricht. The day before, a train accident had disrupted the line, and what began as a mild inconvenience slowly turned into a quiet lesson in surrender—the kind travel often insists we learn, whether we’re ready or not. Platforms blurred into one another, updates came and went without certainty, and the illusion of a neat schedule dissolved somewhere between stations.

Day Trip in Antwerp, Belgium

Traveling around Europe, especially within the Schengen Zone, has a certain fluidity to it. Borders blur into railway tracks and bus routes; a new country is often just a few hours away, announced not by checkpoints but by subtle changes in language, architecture, and rhythm. Movement here feels effortless, almost taken for granted. On one of my rare free days in Amsterdam, with no meetings to rush to and no agendas to defend, I decided to take the train south to Antwerp—a city near the Dutch border that has long stood as one of Europe’s vital crossroads for trade, shipping, and learning.

As Amsterdam slowly unfolds...

18 days. 18,000 kilometers. 18 extra kilos of luggage that somehow carried more questions than clothes.

This was the longest work trip I’ve ever taken, both in distance and in weight. Not just the kind measured by flight hours and baggage allowances, but the kind that settles into your bones. It was a blur of airports that all started to look the same, meetings that bled into one another, conferences where time zones dissolved and coffee became a survival tool. Somewhere between security checks and boarding calls, there were moments when I’d stare at departure screens and feel an odd dislocation—physically present, mentally suspended between where I had been and where I was headed next.