ChiaraJeroenIsabellaJapan2019

Doug, a good friend of mine, told me I would hear these words all the time: "Go chuui  kudasai!": "Please be careful!". I was last in a bus, watching supercute cars driving around —you know those cars with a short nose and an open face, so different from those ferocious faces some European cars have, especially when lights are on— when the recorded voice said it again and announced the name of the next bus stop.  I started fantasizing that perhaps “ chuui”  in "Go chuui  kudasai" ("go" - and "kudasai", being there just for politeness' sake) means much more than just caution. In my phantasy " chuui " yielded the explanation for two phenomena that I have experienced in this one and a half month in Japan (mind you: I am not pretending to say anything about Japan/the Japanese in general). First , the atmosphere is always  peaceful. There is no everyday aggressive behaviour.  There is no shouting, nobody t...

I suddenly remember a phrase I heard 2 years ago at a conference in Honolulu: the virtue of the shallow roots . The point, a little trivialized, is: take your values with you; which implies not having values that cannot be transported to another context and adapt in such a way that they can be manifested in new situations and relations. And don't lose your values if you move lands. Are there deep roots I had to cut before leaving? No. Do I feel uprooted? Not at all! I don't miss a single thing. Do I feel at home? I don't know. Do I ever feel at home? What might that mean? Sendai - morning walk to the school bus Let's try: home might mean  language , food , landscape , energy of people . Food, landscape, energy of people: I feel at home in Japan. Language - I understand a word every 3 sentences: not home. Could I live here? I think so, once I learned the language. Will I miss Japan when I am not here? For sure. TeamLab Planets Tokyo TeamLab Pla...