Before the Cup

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Gifu, Japan
Summer · May 2025

Everyone knows green tea. Far fewer have had the privilege of standing among rows of tea bushes, handpicking tender leaves, and getting hands-on experience turning those freshly plucked leaves into tea or grinding processed tea leaves into matcha powder.

The day began rather unremarkably. I came across an Instagram post about a green tea harvesting tour and forwarded it to H without giving it much thought. Knowing how his roster worked and how understaffed they were, I wasn’t holding out much hope that he would be able to get time off at such short notice. But one day, he surprised me by asking if I was genuinely interested in the tour, because he could spare the time to go with me. I don’t think I’ve ever nodded my head so enthusiastically.

And, as they say, the rest was history.

Ours was a small group of just eight participants, plus the tour guide. We had sworn off guided group tours two decades ago, and approached this one with some trepidation, fervently hoping we wouldn’t have to put up with inconsiderate tour mates again. As it turned out, our prayers were answered and then some. I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised; perhaps a niche interest tour like this tends to attract well-travelled individuals who share a genuine appreciation for the experience and a certain consideration for their fellow travellers.

Shirakawa-cho, not to be confused with Shirakawa-go, famous for its thatched-roof houses, is nestled in the mountains of Gifu Prefecture. Nearby Mino is renowned for its traditional washi paper. Unlike Uji, whose tea enjoys widespread recognition, Shirakawa-cho remains off the beaten track for most visitors. In fact, our visit was such a rarity that we even made it into the local news!

Shirakawa-cho produces some fine green tea, albeit on a modest scale. Being complete amateurs, we weren’t entrusted with plucking leaves from the hillside plantations. Instead, our first taste of tea picking took place in a small tea field beside the car park in the town centre. It looked easy enough, but picking tea leaves was hard work. For us city dwellers, it was certainly no walk in the park. And that wasn’t even counting the mosquito bite on my temple, which swelled to worrying proportions. Yes, a foreign mosquito left me with an infection.

We were even provided with traditional tea-picking costumes

We had a full two days of immersive, hands-on experience. After plucking the tender tea leaves, we went through the entire process of making kamiiricha, pan-roasting the leaves in a large iron pan. We weren’t quite using our bare hands, but the fabric gloves provided so little protection from the heat that it sometimes felt as though we were!

And just when I thought the worst was over, we moved on to yet another method of tea-making: temomicha, or hand-rolled tea. Throughout the day, we took turns hunching over the heated work station, under the watchful eye of an award-winning artisan. She offered pointers along the way, often stepping in to take over before we could do too much damage to the precious tea leaves. Her gentle manner really touched me, especially since we weren’t exactly doing a stellar job. Well, I wasn’t, anyway. H, on the other hand, seemed to have a natural knack for it!

The tea masters were kinda fixing the mess we created 😆

Of all the activities, I much preferred stone-grinding tencha into bright green matcha powder, partly because I love drinking matcha (nope, I’m not going to admit that the fact that this was the easiest of all the tasks might also have had something to do with it). It was quite amazing to watch the transformation and fascinating to think that those dark green leaves could yield such a vivid green powder!

It looked deceptively easy to turn this granite mill it wasn’t easy. We were also told we should turn at a slow, steady speed to mill fine matcha powder.

And oh, did I mention that we also had a tea master come by to teach us how to prepare and enjoy our matcha in a simple Japanese tea ceremony? And as if that wasn’t enough, we ended the day with a tea-tasting workshop, sampling so, so many different types of tea. By then, we had certainly earned our stripes as tea enthusiasts!

We left Shirakawa-cho the next morning with a deeper appreciation for the humble cup of green tea — something so readily available on supermarket shelves, yet the product of so much care, skill, hard work and pride in one’s craft.

If this tour sounds like your cup of tea, it’s organised by Kitabi Travel, and I believe Heidi runs it annually in early summer. And no, this isn’t an advertisement — just a genuinely enjoyable experience worth sharing!

Tulip Whisper

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Lisse, The Netherlands
Spring · Apr 2022

A little red tulip, quietly standing among a sea of yellow.

The farmer later confirmed that it really was a mistake — one red bulb somehow making its way into a field meant to be entirely yellow. I imagine it must have been easy to overlook when everything was being planted. By the time the flowers bloomed, there it was, a single splash of red in an otherwise perfect stretch of yellow.

And yet, standing there, it was very naturally the one I noticed first. There was something rather lovely about that unexpected interruption. It broke the uniformity of the field without taking anything away from it. In fact, the red tulip somehow made all that yellow around it even more vivid.

Maybe mistakes aren’t always meant to be fixed. Sometimes they simply become part of the picture, and perhaps even make the whole thing a little more interesting.

Like us, perhaps — occasionally out of place, not quite as planned, but somehow belonging after all.

A Different Way Through the Day

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China has a way of reminding you that you’re somewhere different. It isn’t the language, or even the food. It’s the systems: paying for lunch, booking a hotel, hailing a taxi, ordering coffee… almost every small task depends on an ecosystem built for China–and for the people who live there.

As a visitor, you quickly realise you’re not just navigating a new country; you’re learning a different way of getting through the day.

And as someone who plans every trip with military precision, I thought I’d get ahead of the game. Weeks, even months before our extended family holiday to Shanghai, I found myself downloading app after app–payments, ride-hailing, maps, train tickets, restaurant bookings. By the time I was done, I’d installed six or eight Chinese apps, each solving one small part of the puzzle.

There was only one problem: my iPhone was already protesting. Years of refusing to delete travel photos had left me perpetually short of storage. Every new app became a negotiation. Which memories could I temporarily part with so I could make room for the next download?

And then we arrived, and all that preparation had to become muscle memory. We stood at counters, studied screens, scanned codes and watched what everyone else seemed to know instinctively. The systems were invisible to the people who lived with them every day. For us, they were part of a very new experience.

It was only then that I realised the biggest challenge wasn’t navigating Shanghai itself. It was learning the invisible systems that made Shanghai work. For the first time, the biggest hurdle wasn’t crossing a border; it was crossing into another digital ecosystem.

And there was something strangely humbling about that.

At home, I am used to moving through the day without thinking too much about the infrastructure underneath it. I tap a card, open an app, book a ride, order something online. These actions have become so familiar that I barely register them. In China, those same habits suddenly had to be relearned. I became much more aware of how much of everyday life is shaped by the systems around us, and how quickly we stop noticing them once they become familiar.

Travelling with an extended family added another layer to it. There were more people to coordinate, more phones to keep charged, more tickets and bookings to keep track of, and more moments when someone would look to me as the designated organiser and ask, “So what do we do now?”

Which, admittedly, was not always a question I could answer.

For all my preparation, there were plenty of moments when we simply had to stop, look around and figure things out as we went. And perhaps that was the most useful part of the preparation after all. The apps helped, the saved information helped, and the careful planning helped — but none of them could completely remove the unfamiliarity of being somewhere new.

The preparation for China happened on my phone before it happened in my luggage. I spent weeks downloading apps, clearing storage and trying to anticipate what we would need. Once we arrived, there was still plenty I hadn’t thought of — which, in retrospect, was probably inevitable.

The Best Decision of 2026 (Thus Far)

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Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan
Summer · Jul 2026

The hubs bought me a new MacBook Neo in June, ahead of my five-day silent retreat in Chiangmai. In the midst of an intensive job search, we thought it would be prudent to travel with a proper laptop instead of an iPad. That decision ended up being the best decision of 2026 (thus far).

A month later, we were in Hokkaido for a milestone birthday trip when an email arrived notifying me of a job interview — along with a 1,000-word essay due in three days.

The hotel room where I slogged over the essay.

So I spent the next three nights in Sapporo slogging over the essay, while everyone else was presumably enjoying the holiday. And I was very thankful for my foresight — and the hubs’ agreement — to bring along the Macbook because I cannot imagine writing this essay on a smaller gadget.

We had an uneasy few days in Sapporo as a result of this assignment. How to answer the question intelligently and thoughtfully was almost always at the back of my mind, taking up more mental space than I would have liked. The hubs had to remind me to enjoy myself. I suppose I did eventually, having ended up adding almost ten pieces of apparel to my wardrobe.

The hubs was not spared either. He had to listen to me read and re-read every paragraph aloud, again and again, after every edit, all while trying to figure out how we were going to pack our very much expanded belongings — and the Royce chocolates. I suspect he knew almost as much about the essay by the time I submitted it as I did.

At that point, the business was still operating. I wasn’t officially looking at the great unemployed abyss yet. But I knew its end was coming end of August, and here I was, in Japan, suddenly writing my way into whatever might come next. On hindsight, could I have asked for a slight postponement to the submission date? Absolutely. I just didn’t feel like doing so.

Prior to the interview a week or so later, the hubs had reminded me not to stress too much about finding a job. He earns enough for the both of us and didn’t need my income, just the opportunity for me to get out of the house, he said. It reminded me rather inexplicably of Pursuit of Jade, where Changyu tells her injured husband that if he stays, she can simply slaughter pigs to feed him. I suppose this was the modern version: no pigs required, just a husband who was quite prepared to keep the household going while I figured out what came next.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to figure out what came next for very long.

The offer came.

And so, on our 22nd wedding anniversary, I find myself thinking about how often the hubs has given me the freedom to step into uncertainty — simply because he knew that being happier mattered.

Happy anniversary, hubs. ❤️

Full Moon

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Copenhagen, Denmark
Winter · Feb 2026

There is something about a full moon that makes me stop and look. At Nyvayn, with the moon hanging bright above the dark landscape, the night seemed unusually still.

The moon waxes and wanes, growing brighter and then slowly disappearing from view. We tend to think of the full moon as the complete version, but it is only one moment in a much longer cycle. In a few days, the light will begin to thin again, and eventually there will be only a sliver.

Perhaps that is what I like about it. There is no need for every phase to be full or bright. The moon simply moves through them, one after another.

And then, quietly, it begins again.

Getting into It

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You hear all about the magic of a hot-air balloon ride. Nobody ever mentions the awkward business of getting into the basket.

I found out the hard way.

The morning air was crisp and unexpectedly cold, despite it being the height of summer in southern France. We had driven for hours in the dark to get to the launch site, so by the time we arrived I was still only half awake, trying to work out where exactly we were. Around us, the pilots were already at work, laying out the enormous balloons and firing up the burners. Slowly, the colourful fabric began to fill with hot air, rising from the ground as the baskets were prepared.

Everyone else seemed captivated by the spectacle. I was too, at least initially, but somewhere between watching the balloons take shape and hearing the pilots explain what we were about to do, I became quietly aware of a more immediate problem.

I was wearing a dress.

I have a particular dress that I reserve for travel days involving long drives. It is comfortable, easy to wear and, in my mind, entirely appropriate for sitting in a car for several hours when I’m the driver. The journey to the launch site certainly qualified, so naturally, that was what I had chosen that morning since I was going to drive the leg back. It was only when we were getting ready to board that I discovered a small but rather important detail about hot-air balloon baskets: they don’t have doors. The only way in was to climb over the side.

Which is perfectly sensible when you’re wearing trousers. Less so when you’re wearing a dress.

I stood there for a moment, trying to work out whether there was some alternative entrance I had somehow missed. There wasn’t. The other passengers were already climbing in, while I contemplated the rather undignified manoeuvre that lay ahead of me. Eventually, with no other options available, I gathered up my dress and attempted to get myself over the side of the basket with as much dignity as the situation allowed.

Suffice it to say, it wasn’t my finest moment. My friends, sensing the seriousness of the situation, quietly gathered around me to provide what little privacy and dignity they could. I have no idea whether anyone else noticed. I prefer not to know.

Once I was finally inside, however, the whole thing became a non-issue. The burners roared, the basket lifted gently from the ground, and within minutes we were floating above the French countryside. The sun was just beginning to rise, casting a soft golden hue across the bucolic landscape. Below us, fields stretched out in every direction, including long bands of lavender glowing purple in the early morning light, with little villages and winding roads scattered between them.

Up there, there was no thought of dresses or awkward climbs. Everything was quiet and unhurried. We drifted above the countryside as the sun climbed higher, the lavender fields gradually brightening below us. From that height, the landscape seemed almost unreal — neat rows of fields, tiny houses and roads disappearing into the distance, all softened by the warm morning light. It was one of those experiences that made me wish I could slow time down.

Eventually, of course, the balloon had to come down. And that meant getting out. I had rather conveniently forgotten about this minor detail but unfortunately, there was no way out of it. Naturally getting out was every bit as graceful as getting in.

I would like to say it was easier the second time. It wasn’t. But after a morning like this, a little embarrassment seemed a small price to pay. I even managed to drop my Gucci sunnies while helping to pack up the balloon. Somehow, it still felt worth it.

The Village People

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They say it takes a village to raise a child. Sometimes, that village gathers in the kitchen to bake chocolate cookies for Teachers’ Day.

I have not baked cookies in a long time, having moved on to other confections and, more recently, bread. But baking with my nine-year-old nephew calls for something foolproof and forgiving, and few things fit the bill better than a good ol’ drop cookie.

So we measured, mixed, scooped and baked — a little flour here, a little chocolate there, and quite a bit of tasting along the way. He took his responsibilities seriously, particularly the tasting part. He was also very taken with my KitchenAid, wanting to ramp up the speed to level 10 several times. Just how do you tell a young boy that sometimes more haste, less speed, especially where baking is concerned?

There is something quite different about baking with a child. Everything takes a little longer. Measurements have to be explained, instructions occasionally have to be repeated, and apparently no bowl of chocolate chips can be left unattended. And then there was the repeated question: “Can I eat one now? Or three?” He asked often enough that I began to wonder whether he thought the cookies were actually being made for him.

But there is also something satisfying about seeing the look of wonder on his face — that moment when following a recipe stops being a series of instructions and starts becoming something he has made. He wanted to do things properly, and was afraid of making mistakes. He was also surprisingly serious about mixing the batter thoroughly so the chocolate chips and chocolate chunks were well incorporated, and about getting the batter roughly the same size. Clearly he  understood the assignment, that in baking some things had to be done in a particular order. I was reminded that what seems obvious after years in a kitchen is not necessarily obvious to someone seeing it for the first time.

And perhaps that is part of the fun. Baking is wonderfully forgiving when you are nine. A misshapen cookie is still a cookie. A little too much chocolate is hardly a catastrophe. Even the ones that spread more than intended still disappeared rather quickly.

These were for his teachers, a small thank-you made by hand. There is something rather nice about that: taking the time to make something for the people who, in their own way, have been part of his village.

And yes, I know someone is going to ask for the recipe. It will appear here eventually. Just not… yet.

Stepping into the Frame

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Tokushima, Shikoku, Japan
Spring · Apr 2018

For years, I was the one behind the camera. And I was a prolific photographer, with folders filled with landscapes, meals, little corners of cities and moments that caught my eye. Yet when I was putting together a collage for our 20th wedding anniversary, I realised something strange: I could hardly find any photographs of the two of us together.

One of the frames we finally remembered to step into.

I had documented so many journeys, but somehow forgotten to include the two people who were making them.

So these days, we make a conscious effort to be in the frame together. Not because every moment needs to be recorded, but because one day, we may want to remember not just where we went, but that we were there together.

What the Waves Remember

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Kōchi, Shikoku, Japan
Spring · Mar 2024

Standing before the raging waters of Kōchi, I lost myself for a moment in the fury of the waves. I stood there almost motionless, just watching them rise, break, and crash against the shore. For a while, I barely noticed anything else around me. My thoughts wandered—not really to the ocean itself, but to the people who had once set out into it. Fishermen who knew these waves not from a distance, but from within them.

The Pacific Ocean hurled itself relentlessly against the rocks. Strong winds tore at hats, scarves, and umbrellas. Parents instinctively held on to their young children as they stood watching. Cars pulled over along the coast, and strangers seemed to fall into the same quiet silence as I did, completely captivated by the raw force in front of us.

I shuddered, partly from the cold, but mostly from imagining what these waters must have been like centuries ago. Before modern engines and reinforced hulls. When fishing was not just a job, but a livelihood, and every time a boat left the shore, there was always the possibility of not coming back. How frightening it must have been.

Courage is not the absence,
But the conquest of fear.

For the first time, I understood courage a little differently.

It was not necessarily found in dramatic acts of heroism, but in ordinary people pushing their boats into a sea that frightened them because their families depended on it. Fear was never the opposite of courage. It was part of it.

Later, I learned more about the Nankai Trough, the offshore subduction zone capable of producing some of Japan’s most powerful earthquakes and tsunamis. Kōchi is among the prefectures most directly exposed to it. Knowing this added another layer to what I had already felt standing there. The people of Kōchi have lived for generations with the knowledge that the sea that sustains them can also threaten them.

Perhaps that is why what stayed with me was not really the violence of the waves, but the quiet resilience of the people who have learned to live alongside them. They do not conquer nature, but they do not surrender to it either. They simply carry on, with a deep respect for its power, accepting both what it gives and what it can take away.

The sea has given Kōchi an extraordinary abundance of seafood and shaped a culture deeply connected to it. But watching those waves, I began to think that every catch brought ashore carries with it generations of courage, perseverance and quiet resolve.

Long after the roar of the Pacific faded behind me, that memory was what stayed with me the longest.