[This post is an excerpt from my weekly newsletter, which I human-write in Japanese and in English.]

No, I’ve never been to Australia. I need to book a flight though! I want to spend time with a friend in a coastal suburb of Sydney and another friend in South Australia’s rural area. When I’m there, talking over tea or catching a fresh seafood truck together will make me very happy. Everything else is icing on the cake. It’s the company.

And the icing on my Sydney cake consists of:

• walking around (river walks, Botanic Gardens)
• cafes (reading, writing, snacks, conversation, zoning out) and more cafes
• architecture (Rose Seidler House, Punchbowl Mosque, Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, Jean Nouvel’s One Central Park, National Library of Australia’s article on architecture)
• grocery shopping (Harris Farm Markets, Miracle Supermarkets, Valley View Continental Groceries & Spices)
• mall parking lot stakeout (for wild parrot sighting, which, according to my friend M, is a thing in Australia.)
• museums and galleries (White Rabbit Gallery, First Nations Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chau Chak Wing Museum, Artspace, Caroline Simpson Library)
• events found in Honi Soit “the weekly student newspaper of the University of Sydney.”
• Blue Mountains

And I usually say yes to all invitations.

I think we travel the way we live our everyday life. Although, away from home, our values and preferences and emotions tend to come to the surface. We are often a more intensified (distilled?) version of ourselves when we travel. What do you think?

Are you the kind of person who doesn’t mind scratching the surface and going back to scratch some more? Me too. There’s no shortcut to getting to know a place or a person. Now tell me! about your places.

today’s special [august 3, 2025]

something new: I’ve started redesigning this blog the way I might renovate an apartment.
something read: Meredith Fineman “Brag Better,” more of

today’s special [february 1, 2025]

something new:  I’ve been having a long, deep conversation with Claude AI.
something read: Langston Hughes “I Wonder As I Wander” and Marion Franklin “What Would a Wise Person Do?” a little bit of each