I hope everyone’s doing well and has been able to enjoy the slightly warmer weather. Sakura season has come and gone, and it was a time where I felt very fortunate to be living in Japan. Even though the numbers are still not what they should be, Japan seems to have found a new normal. The states of emergency were never really strict (however small businesses and restaurants had to close sooner), no curfews were imposed and as long as you wear a mask and social distance, you’re really free to go as you please. A lot of companies have switched to a flexible rotation schedule when it comes to WFH, which means a lot of people close to me have found some mental peace after being burnt out by long office hours. Last year, I condemned the thousands of people that gathered together under the cherry blossom trees. This year, having adjusted to the new normal, I feel like the hanami parties have toned down and people enjoyed the arrival of spring in a much more intimate way. Most parks I went to, young families, small friend groups, couples, etc. were seated on a little blanket with their bentos under a cloud of pink. No huge groups, no loud drunk university students, and not as many blue sheets (which are the norm to use as your picnic blanket/sheet).
Dion and I came across this park in Utsunomiya on our way back from a shoot. It was crowded, but people definitely kept their distance. Walking up a hill, we encountered one cherry blossom tree after the other, and finally ended up in a larger area filled with these pink trees. We were in awe of how beautiful this area was. Especially after having stayed home during most of this season last year, it felt like I was rediscovering a Japan from a distant memory. The sakura season has now passed, but looking at these photos still makes me smile.
Aaaaaand I’m back! A very belated Happy New Year! I want to thank everyone who stuck around and kept asking me when the next blogpost would be. Overall, I’ve been posting much less on social media than I used to, as the pandemic definitely hit my creativity and sense of inspiration. I did not want to create content for the sake of content, and in my daily life, I fell into a deep rut. It took a while for me to get in the swing on things this year, but now I finally feel ready to come back to this platform as well. In order to stick to a writing schedule, I will consider this space as a little online diary and archive for photos of some sorts.
Like most people, I found it difficult to stick to a consistent routine, as most days just seemed to melt into each other. But as work got busier and I started doing things again occasionally on weekends (always keeping safety in mind), I felt extremely productive and ready to take on more. I was talking about this phenomenon with a friend the other day, about how productivity makes creative. When I just sit around all day, it’s extremely difficult to rise from my chair and actually make something of my day. Whereas if I push myself to just do something remotely productive, whether it’s cleaning the coffee machine or make a grocery list or finally cancelling that one email subscription that’s been annoying me for months, I feel a lot more creative and eager to do more.
Work has gotten very busy in a short span of time. The State of Emergency has been lifted in Tokyo, which means we could start production again. And planning one shoot is already extremely time consuming, but planning all the shoots we’ve put off because of the situation and moving forward with them in one week time… the word busy becomes an understatement. But don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the whole process of shoots, and I believe that finally getting this started up again has boosted my creative spirit to new heights.
When we reach the weekend, I don’t just want to wind down, but I want to do something for myself. Back in Belgium, I had many hobbies and a very active social life, which of course due to the pandemic died down in Japan anyway, but I never invested in it here as much as I did in Belgium. So I decided to proactively take on hobbies again in a social environment. I joined a book club, which not only encourages me to read more, but I also get the chance to (virtually) meet a bunch of intelligent and fun people. I joined a theatre group, which is something I’ve been thinking of doing for years. I stopped acting after getting my theatre diploma when I was 19, and never got back into it because of the workload of uni. But this theatric world is something that fascinates me endlessly, so I looked up an organization in Tokyo and immediately signed up. They are not doing any productions at the moment due to obvious reasons, but once they do, I’m ready to jump on board and delve back into this part of my life. I also started taking reformer pilates classes. I’ve dabbled with pilates since I started working out more regularly, but I never really took classes for this. I would go to the gym and as a warm-up I would do pilates by myself on a mat. I’ve been seeing reformer pilates everywhere online lately, and it’s something I really wanted to try and challenge myself in a new way. And lastly, I’ve been investing my time in cherishing deeper and meaningful relationships. I used to be so exhausted after work pre-pandemic, with the long working hours and commute, but now that we have this indefinite remote work system, for which we only need to be at the office 2 to 3 days a week, I feel so energized and excited to talk to people and invest in relationships. Whether it’s making time to jump on a call with close friends more often, or sending messages to people I’d like to get to know better.
One final topic I’d like to raise here before signing off, is that it is also perfectly okay not to be productive, and in all honesty, I hate that word. If we strive to be “productive” all the time, it just spirals to the opposite direction, creating a weird sense of anxiety. So by using the word “productive,” I don’t mean to stress yourself out with everything you should be doing, but for me it meant to find those few core significant elements in life – i.e. theatre, working out, reading and human connections – and actually do something with it. Mentally it will be a challenge to get out of that rut, but once you’re back in that flow, things will happen organically and will take less of a toll on your mind. I know I keep writing “you,” but please understand that this is all from my perspective and that everyone’s situation is majorly different.
These are a few photos shot in Tochigi Prefecture, where we had our first shoot of the year last Friday.
I thought I’d write an update on what happened in the last few days. If you follow me on Instagram, I’m sure you already know what this will be about, as I posted about what happened as the hours passed, but this experience deserves a quick and impromptu article on this space as well.
We were on location in Niigata from Tuesday to shoot in snow for a winter themed project. The weather forecast was not being very clear about whether there would even be snow, so we were already prepared to make changes to the concept of this project if we would not find any snow at all. But we did find snow… And we found a lot of it. Once we drove through the tunnel that was famously described by Kawabata Yasunari in Snow Country (雪国, yukiguni), it was the most snow I had ever seen in my life.
「長いトンネルを抜けると雪国であった…」 “The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.”
This was Tuesday, and it was the first snow of the year. After snowing for merely one day, the white mass already reached one meter. I was considering cancelling the project altogether, as there was too much snow and the situation was becoming dangerous. On Wednesday, there was still a lot of snow, but we were well prepared with lots of equipment and the snowfall during the day was not so bad, so we managed to get the footage we came for. That evening we kanpai‘d and slept like babies after a job well done.
On Thursday morning, we packed our bags and were ready to drive back to Tokyo. The news reported that there might be heavy traffic due to the snow, but nothing really extreme came up as far as we could see. One hour from our hotel, we drove up the Kanetsu expressway. Traffic was slow but still moving, but after about 30 minutes, we came to a complete standstill. A long line of cars was starting to appear behind us and we were completely blocked on all sides. After 2 hours, we moved forward for about 100 meters, but then we stood still again. Hours passed by without any news or updates from authorities. We were getting hungry and started eating our snacks and omiyage (souvenir snacks) for lunch. We still had some water and soda in the car, but we drank as little as possible to avoid having to go to the bathroom. At around 3PM, people from the Nippon Expressway Company came up to every car and truck to hand out Calorie Mates and portable toilets. We asked the woman who handed over our package about the situation and what our best course of action would be. She told us that getting back to Tokyo that day would be close to impossible, and she wasn’t even sure whether we would get off the expressway that evening. She told us that at the they were trying to clear vehicles one by one at the front of the line. This gave us a tiny sprinkle of hope and we started looking up hotels in the area. All was already fully booked. We then called our hotel we stayed at before, we explained the situation and they still had rooms available for us. Hours passed by with no news from authorities. One of my absolutely lovely colleagues and friend reached out and kept me updated on whatever appeared in the media. Then she said one thing that scared us more than anything: be careful of carbon dioxide poisoning. This played with our heads, and we looked up all kinds of tips and recommendations for this type of situation. We opened and closed our windows, turned the engine on and off, went outside for fresh air once in a while. We were “lucky” to be stranded next to a wall of snow, with no cars on the other side, which meant that this was fresher air to breathe. We were also incredibly lucky that we fueled up right before leaving, so we could keep the engine running for heating and had electricity to charge our phones. At 7PM, we made the executive decision to split up and a part of our group would walk to find food. We made sure that each group had a Japanese speaker, in case anything would happen once they left, so I stayed as a Japanese speaker with the group in the car.
The group that left for food walked for a total of 5km. They did not even reach the exit they they planned to reach, but a friendly older man told them about a secret staircase that connected the expressway to another road. They climbed the stairs and hopped the fence to the other road, they walked until they found a Chinese restaurant where they warmed themselves and filled their stomachs. Then they ordered as much takeout as they could carry and brought it back to the car. I was so happy to finally have some food that day, and suddenly felt extreme guilt and sadness for all the people around us they could not eat, that ran out of fuel and were probably extremely cold. We had some leftover food and gave it to the man stranded beside us.
At 7PM we read an article that Niigata asked the Japanese Self Defense Force to come for help, and at 9:40PM we saw a huge convoy of army trucks pass by on the other lane. There was no movement around us for the longest time, but at around 10:30PM we saw the JSDF dig out cars behind us, and we pulled out our shovels and started digging around us as well. By the time they reached us, we could quickly be evacuated. They helped us make a crazy narrow U-turn and led us to the police barricade. The police directed the freed cars to make a convoy of about 10 to 15 vehicles, and then after standing there for another 30 minutes, we could finally drive off the Kanetsu expressway at 00:30AM.
We reached the hotel at 1:20AM. And now I want just want to write a special thank you to Hotel Yumoto in Niigata, and especially to theman at the front desk. As we kept him updated on the phone about our situation, he told us he would wait for us as long as is needed and all that mattered was our safety. The front desk normally closes at 12AM but he stayed up for us and when we arrived, he even opened the onsen specially for us to warm up. My team said they had never seen my eyes sparkle more than at that exact moment. That night, we got to sleep in a warm room.
Yesterday, we left the hotel at around 9:00AM and upon much research of the weather and road situation, we took a different route and made it back safely to Tokyo around 5PM.
As we were driving back to Tokyo, we saw the news of all the people that were stranded on the Kanetsu expressway overnight. The realization dawned on us that if we had left one hour earlier on Thursday, we would have been stranded further ahead on the expressway, and would have had to spend the night in the car. We were extremely lucky, despite having stood still and being snowed in on that road for over 13 hours. My heart goes out to all the children, older people, people without warm clothing and people without gas, heating or food that had to spend the night in their car, and many more hours after that.
Anyone who works or has worked in Japan will be familiar with the ominous keigo. Keigo is polite Japanese taken to the next level and basically it’s used in any business or work-related environment. Now, the line between business and business casual can sometimes seem thin, so I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this as well. I work in advertising, which is generally a fast-paced environment, where speech tends to be more on the casual side. And work-related communications, which used to be all via email for me, has recently crossed the line to LINE (the Japanese Whatsapp variant).
Last week one of our vendors, who is a fantastically friendly french man, put me in contact with one of his Japanese colleagues via LINE for faster communication. I get along really well with the french man and we speak our minds casually, send emojis and all the fun stuff (while still remaining professional, of course), and he told me to act as casual with his Japanese coworker when speaking Japanese with her. Now, you can imagine my shock when I get an osewaninatteorimasu (I am indebted to you – basically the keigo way of saying “Hello”) to my konnichiwa (good afternoon). Without giving it even a second thought, I yoroshikuonegaiitashimasu-t her back (keigo way of saying “sincerely yours”). Then, the aforementioned friendly french man tells me to chill and drop the keigo… But when do you drop the keigo? Is it okay to even consider dropping the keigo at such an early stage? I tried again with an interesting mix of polite and semi-polite, where instead of desuka I would still send her a deshouka, and then again, I get the full on orimasu/itashimasu messages back. Was our step to business casual speech it too premature? To this day, I still wonder. We have spoken keigo to each other on LINE ever since.
Would love to hear some more keigo stories. Has anyone else ever felt this way? Let’s share some memories in the comments.
When thinking of Japan, most people automatically conger up the image of pink cherry blossoms. Now, I will disappoint you all by stating that spring is not my most favorite season in Japan, but fall. Japanese fall is like fall anywhere else in the world, but on steroids. The colors are brighter, the temperature is more pleasant and nature is present in such abundance that you cannot miss it, even in a concrete city like Tokyo. I’m typing this post as I am lying in bed under a huge duvet with a cold, resting so I can go outside again soon and enjoy this gorgeous crisp weather. As a Belgian, who is well spoken in the art of complaining about the weather, fall in Japan is a time I rarely utter one word of negativity surrounding mother nature. When I was a student here almost four years ago, I went on a hike by myself at Mount Takao, and I’m really hoping to do something similar again this year. Maybe I’ll go to Nikko or Hakone… Haven’t quite decided yet, but I should plan it soon as the leaves have already started falling. But first things first: I need to get over this cold before I go anywhere.
On my last trip to Belgium in December 2019, I discovered my mom still had her old Canon 35mm camera. Most of my childhood memories were recorded with this little machine. I have many fond memories of going through the newly developed photos together with my mother. She was not planning to use it again any time soon, so I thought I’d give it a go at being its proud new owner. And as more than often happens with new found hobbies, they end up in the back of a drawer, to be rediscovered once more at a later time.
Finally, after gathering dust for many months (not really because I’m a a cleaning maniac), I decided to give film photography a try. Already I found these two words really daunting: film photography. It’s like proclaiming to be an expert at something, when in reality I had to ask Google-sensei “how to put film in a film camera”. Film photography is now cool and vintage, whereas this just used to be normal. I have a few friends who take photos on film as a hobby or career, and they are really good at it, to say the least. Their photos are beautiful, artistic yet candid, and they even know how to use a dark room. I don’t think I’ll ever reach that level, but I just think it’s fun to try. I live for nostalgia, for that moment when the envelope with freshly printed photos touches my hands. I love knowing that every photo counts, that I will not be scrolling through the hundreds of nearly similar shots on a phone screen. I don’t proclaim these photos to be anything extraordinary, but they are one moment captured on a piece of ribbon, and that moment will forever be mine.
These photos were taken in Shibuya, Harajuku, Shimokitazawa and Jimbocho.
Hannatopia 