Zachary A. Martz

From Osaka with Love

Neon makes its own weather in Osaka.

In the flood of light at Dotonbori, the Glico Runner hangs there like a promise that never gets tired of being repeated—arms wide, caught mid-stride, forever arriving. Around him, signs stack and shimmer, blue bleeding into magenta, language and logos layered like memories that don’t quite separate.

I stood beneath it all and let the noise move past me. The city felt bright and bigger the longer I looked, the way a familiar place can expand when you stop trying to name every detail. There’s a hum to it—screens buzzing, footsteps shifting, distant music leaking from somewhere you can’t see. Not chaotic, exactly. More like a living house: always speaking in creaks and currents if you listen long enough.

From Osaka with Love sounds like a postcard, but it felt more like a small private message, tucked into the electric night. The kind you send when you want someone to know you’re safe, and also a little changed.

If you’ve ever had a city meet you halfway—half spectacle, half quiet—this is that feeling. A bright surface with a softer underside, and a lingering sense that the night is holding something back, just out of frame.

Morning Visit before a hot day

The morning felt like a small mercy—an early visit before the heat could press down and flatten everything into glare.

Inside the shrine space, the red drapes hang like a warm curtain against the day, patterned and still, holding back the brightness outside. Beneath them, stone lanterns stand on either side like quiet sentries. In the center, the figure is softened by time and moisture, wrapped in moss the way an old house can be wrapped in memory—nothing loud, nothing asking to be noticed, just steadily there.

The air is cooler than the streets of Osaka, and it carries that particular calm you only find in places that have been receiving people’s hopes for a long time. A small basin sits in front, water gathered and waiting, with a ladle laid across the rim as if someone has only just stepped away. The details feel ordinary—stone, water, greenery—yet arranged in a way that makes you slow down.

Before long the day will turn sharp and hot, and the city will move at full speed again. But for a moment, standing here, you can listen to one world push up against another: the busy outside and the quiet within. And you leave a little lighter, as if the shade follows you out.

Base of the Mountain

There’s a certain kind of quiet at the base of a mountain—where the day feels paused, as if the landscape is deciding what it wants to say next.

On Miyajima, the sea holds that silence. The great torii gate stands out in the water, its orange pillars weathered at the edges where tide and time keep returning. From a distance it looks almost weightless, like it’s floating on reflection alone. Up close, it feels steadier—rooted, patient, and unbothered by all the cameras aimed its way.

Behind it, the mountain rises in soft layers, blue and hazy, the kind of backdrop that makes everything in the foreground feel more deliberate. Boats move across the bay, and the shoreline sits low and calm, as if the whole place is waiting for the tide to change its shape.

“Base of the Mountain” is what I keep thinking as I look at it—standing between water and land, between the ordinary shoreline and the climb that starts just out of frame. There’s something comforting about that threshold. Not the summit, not the pilgrimage, just the beginning. A reminder that you don’t have to be anywhere yet for a place to feel meaningful.

Top of the Mountain

The top of the mountain isn’t always a sharp line against the sky. Sometimes it’s a soft place, washed out with light, where the world looks farther away than it really is.

From up here the water turns quiet and pale, a wide sheet of blue-gray with islands resting in it like small, steady thoughts. The hills fade into one another until the edges disappear. The air feels thin, not in the dramatic way, but in the way that makes you notice your own breathing and the simple work it took to get here.

The trail up was the usual rhythm: steps, sweat, a pause to drink, then the slow bargaining you do with yourself when the incline refuses to let up. And then—without any announcement—the view opens. It’s not loud. It doesn’t demand anything. It just sits there, patient and clear, letting you arrive.

I like these moments because they feel honest. Up high, the small things are still small, but they matter again: a bare branch reaching into the frame, new green leaves catching the sun, the hush that falls over you when you realize you’re finally standing where you aimed to stand.

“Top of the Mountain” is a simple title, but it fits. Not because the peak is an ending, but because it’s a brief, bright pause before you turn back toward the ordinary world and carry a little of this quiet with you.

Local Oysters and California Chardonnay

There’s something quietly hopeful about seeing food laid out like a small landscape—shells ridged and weathered, piled on crushed ice that looks almost like fresh snow. Local oysters, each one a little different, resting in the cold as if time has slowed down for them.

A bottle of California Chardonnay leans in the middle of it all, casual and unbothered, like it belongs here. The pairing makes sense in the way simple things do when you stop trying to improve them: brine and mineral, then something rounder and sunlit to follow. The oysters taste like the edge of the sea—clean, sharp, alive. The wine doesn’t fight it; it softens the corners.

I like moments like this because they’re ordinary and a little cinematic at the same time. A wooden counter, handwritten price tags, the hush of a market where everyone is deciding what to carry home. You can almost hear the ice shifting under the shells.

Even if you don’t know the exact story behind each oyster—where it was pulled from, who handled it, how far it traveled—you can feel the care in the presentation. It’s a small reminder that place still matters, and that the best meals sometimes start with standing still long enough to notice what’s right in front of you.

Kamotsuro Tokusei Gold Daignjo (Kinpaku) Sake in Hiroshima

There’s a small quietness to sake that I’ve always liked. It doesn’t announce itself the way other drinks can; it waits for you to slow down enough to notice what’s there.

In Hiroshima, I came across Kamotsuro Tokusei Gold Daignjo (Kinpaku) Sake in Hiroshima, a name that feels almost ceremonial before the bottle is even opened. Set on the table, it looked simple and deliberate: a clear bottle resting on a dark tray, a small patterned cup nearby, warm wood grain underneath—like the beginning of a ritual you don’t have to explain.

Daiginjo carries that promise of care—rice polished down, aromas kept clean and lifted—and the kinpaku adds a faint sense of occasion, a little shimmer tucked into an otherwise calm drink. It’s the kind of detail that turns an ordinary pour into a moment: light catching the glass, the cup waiting, the room settling.

I keep thinking of it as a Hiroshima evening scene—something quiet after walking streets that hold both history and everyday life. You sit, you pour, and for a minute you’re not chasing the day anymore. You’re letting it arrive.

If you find this bottle, give it what it asks for: a small cup, a slow sip, and enough silence to notice the warmth reaching you.

Ryokan Shabu-Shabu Dinner

The table is set low and close, the way a room can make you slow down without asking. A heavy pot waits at the edge, dark and speckled, holding heat like an old stone wall holds winter warmth. In front of it: thin ribbons of marbled beef, arranged as if they were meant to be looked at for a moment before becoming dinner.

A second plate brings a small landscape of vegetables and mushrooms—enoki in pale bundles, shiitake stamped with little star cuts, greens and shredded roots piled together. It’s simple and careful at the same time, like the kind of hospitality that doesn’t need extra explanation.

Shabu-shabu is quiet food. The ritual is the point: swish the beef through the broth until it changes color, let the vegetables soften, listen to the small sounds of simmering. Between bites, the tatami and wood and warm steam make the room feel sealed off from the outside world. Even if the day has been crowded with trains, streets, and signs you can’t read, here the pace becomes understandable.

Ryokan Shabu-Shabu Dinner isn’t just a meal—it’s a pause. A little warmth gathered in a pot, shared slowly, until the night feels settled.

Nothing shoes the horrors of war more than Children bowing and singing at the Children’s Peace Monument at Hiroshima

There are places where the air feels asked to remember. Hiroshima is one of them, and the Children’s Peace Monument holds that weight without raising its voice.

In the image, a group of children gathers beneath the pale arching structure, their heads inclined in a single shared gesture. Behind them, panels filled with bright drawings and handwritten messages line the walkway—colorful, almost tender, as if the simplest materials are the only honest way to speak about what can’t be fixed. The trees are thick and green, the sky mild. The day looks ordinary, which is part of what makes it difficult.

Nothing shows the horrors of war more than children bowing and singing. The contrast is sharp: young bodies practicing reverence for lives interrupted long before they had the chance to become unremarkable. The song, imagined or heard, isn’t a performance. It feels like a small, steady insistence that peace is not a concept but an action repeated, taught, and carried forward.

What stays with me is the quiet choreography of it all: backpacks set down, a hush moving through a crowd, adults standing to the side as witnesses. The monument doesn’t let grief end the story, and it doesn’t let hope pretend the past is clean. It simply stands there, asking us to look at what war takes first—and what peace must protect every day.

Snorlax Acquitted

There’s something comforting about a small thing trying to be heavy.

In the photo, Snorlax stands in miniature, built from blocky little pieces—blue and cream stacked into a familiar silhouette. Around its feet, more pieces lie scattered like evidence: tiny rectangles and fragments that look like they were dropped mid-thought. The background is soft and out of focus, the way a room looks when you’re half awake, noticing only what matters.

“Snorlax Acquitted” is a funny headline, but it also feels oddly right. As if this sleepy creature had been called to account for taking up space, for pausing the day, for choosing rest in a world that keeps asking for motion. And then, somehow, cleared.

I like the idea that the verdict isn’t loud. No confetti. Just the quiet permission to be unproductive for a while. To sit there, solid and unbothered, while the scattered pieces wait patiently for their turn to become something whole.

Maybe that’s the best kind of acquittal: not proving you were never guilty, but realizing the charge didn’t matter in the first place.

Looking for Legendary Pokémon

A pagoda rises from the green like a thought you can’t quite hold. Dark wood stacked into patient tiers, rooflines curling at the edges, it stands above a pond scattered with lily pads as if the water has learned to keep secrets.

The title in my head was simple: Looking for Legendary Pokémon. Not in the loud, screen-lit way, but in the quieter kind of searching—walking temple paths where gravel shifts under your shoes, where the air smells like sun-warmed leaves, and every corner feels like it could open into a story you’ve heard before.

In places like this, it’s easy to believe that something rare could be nearby. Not because you expect to catch it, but because the landscape feels older than your expectations. The pagoda doesn’t pose; it just keeps being there, steady and listening. Even the pond seems to hold its breath.

Maybe that’s what we’re really hunting when we travel: a small jolt of wonder, the sense that the world still has hidden rooms. You look up through the branches, and for a second the day feels wider. The ordinary keeps its shape, but it turns slightly—like it’s letting you see the shimmer underneath.

I didn’t find a legendary Pokémon. I found a moment that felt like one.

Angel had another Great Fortune

The temple roof rises in layered arcs, dark wood lifting into the pale sky. It looks built to hold time—each beam fitted and weathered, each edge finished with a careful flourish. Standing there, you can’t help but feel how a place like this keeps its own quiet record, the way old houses do, by simply remaining.

Angel had another Great Fortune.

I like the phrase because it doesn’t sound like winning. It sounds like noticing. Like the small, ordinary turn of a day becoming something you can carry in your pocket. A fortune isn’t always loud; sometimes it’s the moment you look up and realize the world is still full of craft, ritual, and patience.

The ropes and paper streamers hang along the front, a gentle boundary between the outside noise and whatever calm you’re meant to step into. Even if you don’t understand every symbol, you understand the feeling: you’ve arrived somewhere that asks you to slow down.

Maybe that’s the best kind of luck—finding a place that makes you listen. One world pressing softly against another, and you standing in the seam between them, grateful for what you almost missed.

Morning Coffee

There’s a certain quiet ceremony to coffee in the morning—especially when the table is already set like a small still life. Porcelain cups, a dark pour that looks almost blue at the edges, a soft cappuccino foam dusted with something warm, and water glasses catching the light like little panes.

In Tokyo, even the simplest café table can feel carefully composed. Metal tray, tiny pitcher of milk, a polished sugar pot reflecting the room back at itself. A menu card resting in the middle like a note you haven’t opened yet. It’s all ordinary, and somehow it isn’t.

I like moments like this because they’re gentle proof that the day has started, but it hasn’t asked anything from you yet. You can sit with the small sounds—spoons against saucers, a chair shifting, ice settling in a glass—and let the city stay outside for a minute longer.

The first cup is about waking up. The second is about staying. And in between, there’s that brief, bright pause where everything feels simple enough to hold: warmth in your hands, cool water nearby, and the comfort of a table that doesn’t need you to rush.

If you ever need a reason to slow down, start here: one morning, one cup, one quiet corner of Tokyo.