Tokyo at night feels like a second weather system—light instead of snow, heat instead of cold. In Shinjuku, the glow stacks up in layers: signs, windows, screens, and reflections that turn the street into something almost physical.
This is the kind of brightness that doesn’t erase shadows; it makes them sharper. A tall tower of blue lines holds steady in the distance while the street level churns with smaller lights and moving silhouettes. You can stand still and watch the city live alongside you, as if it’s breathing through cables and concrete.
Neon City Lights at Night is a simple title, but the scene is anything but simple. It’s crowded without feeling claustrophobic, loud without needing sound. There’s a particular calm hidden inside the spectacle—a reminder that even the most electric places become familiar once you let them.
I keep thinking about how cities store memories the way old houses do. Not in quiet creaks and settling boards, but in repeated routes, in signs you recognize before you can read them, in the soft hum of movement that never fully stops. Under all that color, the street is still just a street—waiting for you to walk through it and leave with something you didn’t plan to carry.
Tokyo, day two, and I find myself looking down more than up.
In Asakusa, the street has its own quiet language: textured pavement, a yellow tactile strip running along the edge, and a manhole cover set like an emblem in the ground. The cover is patterned like a flower—metal petals, small dots, a careful symmetry—proof that even the parts of a city built to be stepped over can still be made with attention.
My shoes hover at the bottom of the frame, toes angled toward it, like I’ve walked into a small, accidental still life. It’s an unremarkable corner of sidewalk, yet it feels like a postcard of how Tokyo works: practical first, then quietly beautiful.
Walking through Asakusa today, I kept noticing how the city repeats itself in tiny ways. Grooves in the curb. The grit of concrete. The steady promise of that yellow line, guiding people who need it and reminding everyone else to make room. The streets don’t demand that you understand them all at once. They teach you by repetition.
By late afternoon, I realized day two wasn’t about collecting sights. It was about learning Tokyo from the ground up—one pattern, one step, one small pause at a time.
Tsukiji has a way of making lunch feel like a small pilgrimage. You drift down a narrow street stitched with power lines and shop signs, past counters and awnings, past people moving with that steady, practiced pace of a place that’s been doing the same work for a long time.
A banner for grilled tuna flaps above the crowd like a bright, simple promise. The air feels busy even when you stand still—salt, smoke, and something sweet you can’t quite name. It’s ordinary in the way that good places are ordinary: built from routine, repetition, and hands that know what they’re doing.
I came for sushi, but the walk there mattered as much as the first bite. Tsukiji isn’t quiet, yet it carries a kind of calm under the noise. You watch one world push up against another—tourists pausing to point, locals slipping through, vendors calling out, knives flashing briefly and disappearing back into work.
Then lunch arrives: clean cuts of fish, rice pressed just right, a bite that tastes like the sea without trying to explain itself. You don’t need much more than that. You finish, step back into the street, and the market keeps flowing as if nothing happened—except you’re a little more awake than you were before.
The night in Shinjuku feels like it runs on electricity. Light doesn’t just hang in the air—it moves, it pulses, it leans into the crowd and asks you to lean back.
Dance Robots Dance is the simplest way to name what happens in that room, but the scene is bigger than the words. A metallic figure catches every laser line and throws it back in sharp color. Across the floor, other glowing shapes flicker and spin, like a future made from reflections and noise. The audience gathers shoulder to shoulder, faces turned toward the stage, watching the spectacle the way you watch a storm—half delighted, half braced for the next flash.
There’s something oddly human in it: the choreography, the timing, the small pauses that let the room breathe before the lights slice through again. Among all the neon and chrome, you still feel that familiar push and pull—wonder, curiosity, the sense that one world is pressing right up against another.
Later, when the music fades, what stays is the color. The memory of pink and green beams crossing above a crowd. The idea that Tokyo can make even a noisy night feel secret, like you stumbled into it by accident and got to keep it for a moment.
The best laid plans of Dyson and men sometimes go awry. Especially, if you have my luck…adaptation – Robert Burns’ poem To a Mouse, 1786
Days, months, years, hours, minutes, seconds ~ planning, something Angel and I have a mastery over, led us to an early gap in coordination. Our planning was sound in the established goals and ultimate execution, but the timing of commencement was not quite aligned. This manifested itself in a less than grand and slightly bumbling engagement. In retrospect, it fits us perfectly and is a great introduction to the culmination of our matrimonial union.
Call me Zachary. Some months ago — never mind how long precisely — having little time or no time in my calendar, and nothing particular to interest me, I thought I would propose to Angel on the other side of the world.adaptation – Herman Melville novel Moby-Dick, 1851
Years ago, I set a goal to travel to Japan; and after meeting Angel, it became my goal to travel to Japan with him. Characteristically in line with my other excursions, events, and eccentric ideas, I was unable to make this a small and simple trip. Using Angel’s sabbatical as an excuse, we were able to plan a month living and exploring the country. The planned start of the journey was to arrive in Tokyo, but the first big event in the country was to be a surprise for Angel.
Patience is a high virtue… but virtue can hurt you, if you have a cute plan for your engagement proposal…adaptation – Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales , 1387-1400
Some months prior to the start of our trip planning, Angel sat me down, to what I now know to be a normal conversation starter, but my first experience was received as something quite startling… a simple “we need to talk.” To limit myself from digressing into another long story inside a story, I will attempt to cut this short; we talked about getting married and I promised to propose soon.
Jump ahead, weeks before our trip to Japan, I thought myself quite skilled in delaying my proposal delivery. From our first “we need to talk” until this day I had been planning the surprise in Japan. I would start with a special bottle of Sake in our hotel suite and finish the final proposal the following day at the Senso-jo Temple in Asakusa. My longtime friends, Arek and Gavin, would meet us and help film it all.
You never know what worse luck your quirky/off-center luck has saved you from.Adaptation ― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men, 2005
Odds are never in my favor and that day my kindling plan was snuffed out by an afternoon conversation starting with “we need to talk.” Just as casual as the cheese lunch we were eating –some focaccia, brie, and olive oil – Angel proclaimed, “I am tired of waiting. I want to get married.” To my bewilderment and with a slight chuckle, I had to explain all of my near-future plans and in turn cancel them. This is typical for my luck or the modus operandi of my life – things are always just a bit off center. The memorable engagement I planned was instantly overshadowed by this, a slightly more fitting engagement story.
The moral of this story is to keep it simple, do not over think it, and if it is meant to be, the delivery is not important.
“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a GIFT. That’s why it’s called the present.”Adaptation ― Bil Keane, The Family Circus newspaper cartoon, 1994
Now with our future intent declared, we embark on a new journey. First we must complete the planning for our trip to Japan, which in effect is our honeymoon. Again in our “typical” fashion, we are doing things a bit out of order – The honeymoon, the wedding planning, and then the wedding. On top of that, another quest has been given to us, that is, stay on budget and have the wedding in New York City.
Update: We had a surprise waiting for us in Japan from our travel agent… very tasty bottle of sake – the agent had no idea this was part of the original plan.
Update: After we arrived home from Japan our friends through us a surprise engagement party. They picked us up for a friends dinner and it ended up being a party just for Angel and me!
On a small table, two bottles of sake catch the light, and a handwritten note rests beside them like a keepsake you’ll want to fold carefully and save.
We are Officially Engaged.
It’s strange how a moment can feel both loud and quiet at the same time. Loud in the way it changes the shape of the future, quiet in the way the present keeps sitting there, steady, asking you to notice it. A simple table. A drink poured slowly. Ink on paper. The kind of details that become anchors later.
Tokyo has a way of making ordinary scenes feel cinematic. The city hums just beyond the room, and inside there’s this pocket of stillness where gratitude can finally land. This is what I want to remember: not just the announcement, but the tenderness of being cared for, the warmth of a shared toast, the soft weight of a new beginning settling in.
To everyone who has been cheering us on from near and far, thank you. We’re holding this close, taking it in, and letting it unfold one day at a time—together.
Our first meal in Japan was okonomiyaki at Sometaro—simple, warm, and a little mesmerizing.
The griddle sat in the middle of the table like a small, black stage. Two pale rounds of cabbage and batter sizzled quietly, edges loosening as if they were waking up. Steam rose and disappeared. Chopsticks hovered. A cold beer sweated beside a small plate of pickles, the kind of everyday details that make travel feel less like a highlight reel and more like a real afternoon you get to keep.
There’s something grounding about cooking at the table. You’re forced to slow down and watch. The food doesn’t arrive finished; it becomes dinner in front of you. The room around us faded into small sounds—the scrape of metal, the soft chatter, the steady hiss—until it felt like the whole city had narrowed to that warm rectangle.
Okonomiyaki is comfort food with a little ceremony: turn, wait, share, eat while it’s hot. It was the kind of first meal that doesn’t try to impress, and somehow that makes it unforgettable. After the flight and the rush of arrival, Sometaro felt like a quiet welcome.
Tokyo in the morning has a different temperature to it—less hurry, more hush. I arrived at Senso-ji with breakfast still warm in my stomach and the feeling that the day hadn’t decided what it would become yet.
At the gate, the giant lantern hangs like a steady heartbeat. Red beams frame it overhead, and the paint and paper look both weathered and cared for, the way old places do when they’re allowed to keep their age. There’s something grounding about standing beneath something so familiar in photos and finally noticing the details: the creases, the rope, the quiet weight of it all.
I’ve learned that travel isn’t always the big sights—it’s the small moments where one world brushes up against another. A temple visit after breakfast feels simple, almost ordinary, and maybe that’s the point. You walk in, you look up, you slow down. For a few minutes, the city doesn’t ask anything from you.
Senso-ji holds that kind of space. Not empty, not silent—just settled. Like it’s been listening for a long time, and it’s in no rush to answer.
If you ever find yourself in Tokyo early, go before the day gets loud. Let the lantern be the first thing you really look at.
The cabin light has that familiar, late-afternoon glow—the kind that makes everything feel a little softer than it really is. I’m stretched out in my seat, shoes tucked forward, the screen in front of me running an ad about comfort and legroom, as if it’s trying to narrate the moment while I’m living it.
JFK > SEA is only the first leg, but it already feels like the threshold. Airports have their own weather: recycled air, muted announcements, the low tide of people moving with purpose. On the plane, time becomes something you can fold up and put away for later. The tray table clicks. The seat settles. A small pocket of stillness appears.
There’s a strange comfort in these in-between hours—suspended over the country, watching the world reduce itself to patterns and light. It’s not Japan yet, not even close, but the trip has started in the only way trips really start: by leaving.
Seattle is a pause, a breath, a handoff. Soon there will be different signs, different streets, different morning sounds. For now, I’m content to let the hum of the plane and the quiet choreography of travel do their work—carrying me forward while I sit still, thinking about the distance ahead and the stories waiting on the other side of it.
Spring beach time, 1989: not quite summer, not quite anything else. The sand is still cool enough to register, the wind sharp in that early-season way that keeps adults zipped up and kids unfazed.
In the photo, my mom walks along the packed shoreline holding my hand. I’m about a year and a half old—still learning balance, still trusting that the ground will mostly behave. A red sweatshirt is tied around her waist like a practical marker of foresight. She carries a weekend bag, the kind you pack when you don’t yet know how long you’ll stay or what the weather will decide. Behind us, tire tracks cut clean parallel lines, evidence that the beach has already been crossed, flattened, crossed again.
The best throwback photos aren’t dramatic. They look like errands. A walk. A hand held without discussion. Forward motion without a destination. The details date it—the haircut, the sandals, my small late-80s outfit—but the feeling isn’t stuck in a decade. It’s the ordinary certainty of being guided across uneven ground before you know how to do that yourself.
Spring at the beach was never about swimming. It was about arriving early, when the shoreline was still half-awake, and letting the day remind you how to be outside.
A picture doesn’t bring the past back. It just proves it happened. Sometimes that’s enough.
There’s a particular kind of warmth that settles over a table when a birthday is the reason everyone showed up. It’s not loud, not staged. It’s in the small things: the shine of glassware catching low light, the quiet order of plates and folded napkins, the way people lean in toward one another as if the evening is a room you can step into and close the door behind you.
Happy Birthday Angel. A simple line, but it carries a whole soft history—shared meals, familiar jokes, the comfort of being known. At dinner, that feeling becomes tangible. You can see it in the relaxed shoulders, in the easy smiles, in the way the table feels lived-in before the first course even arrives.
Restaurants can be anonymous places, but nights like this give them a pulse. The wood grain under candlelight, the clink of forks, the paused moment before everyone starts talking at once—little ordinary details turning quietly meaningful.
Birthdays aren’t only about marking time. They’re about gathering it. Collecting a handful of people and making one evening feel like it belongs on a shelf in your mind, ready to be taken down later when you need something steady.
Here’s to Angel—celebrated well, surrounded by friends, and held for a moment in the gentle ceremony of dinner.
Dyson runs straight into winter like it’s an invitation. In the middle of all that white, he’s a dark, eager shape cutting a path through the churned-up snow, tennis ball held tight like a prize he earned fair and square. His ears are up, his eyes are locked in, and his whole body says the same thing: throw it again.
Snow has a way of rewriting a place. It softens the edges, hushes the street, and makes even familiar ground feel briefly new. Every footprint becomes a small story—where you went, how fast, how excited you were to get there. Dyson seems to read the page as he goes, adding lines as quickly as he can.
There’s a particular joy in watching a dog take the cold personally, like it’s not something to endure but something to conquer. The air might sting, the snow might melt into slush later, but right now it’s all possibility. A ball, a run, a return. Simple rules, endless rounds.
Maybe that’s the best part of days like this: the reminder that you don’t need much to feel full of it. Just a bright green-and-blue circle, a stretch of snow, and someone who comes back every time like it’s the first time.
