Two little eye emojis and a screenshot from the KLM app – that was all my brother sent. “Wait, are you guys coming to Japan?!” They weren’t even staying a full week, I saw on the ticket. “Yeah, little yolo move,” my brother replied.

I think it runs in the family. Well, maybe not my dad or my grandpa, but my brother and I definitely have it in us. I’ve flown to Japan for even shorter trips in the past, sometimes for work, sometimes just because there was a good deal and I needed a change of scenery.

For my brother and his wife, though, this trip came after a few insanely busy months. They’re having a house built, my niece just started elementary school, that school is already in the new town, so they spend half their lives driving back and forth… They really needed a break. They dropped my niece off at her grandparents’ place and booked themselves a different fantastic restaurant for every afternoon and evening. Well, except for one night, which François took care of. He took us to a tofu restaurant.

And you might think: ugh, tofu? But no — it was amazing! The place itself was already adorable, but the live tofu-making was the highlight. At the start of the evening they placed some kind of pot with soy milk on our table, and by the time we reached the end of the meal, that milk had turned into the softest, most delicious tofu you’ve ever tasted.

I actually wasn’t supposed to be here that week. Months earlier, in a similar spur-of-the-moment mood, I’d bought tickets for K3 (the new lineup) with a live band at 013. But I still hadn’t booked a flight, and I honestly couldn’t afford it anyway with my new, self-published book coming up. And now I’d also miss my brother?

Within about five seconds I decided I just wouldn’t go to the Netherlands. I gave the K3 tickets to Aafke and her daughter – they loved the show.

A week before my brother arrived, Charlotte was also in Japan. She was traveling with a friend and her kid, started in Osaka, and only later came to Tokyo, where she’d also be staying a few nights with another friend – in short, a packed schedule. But she stayed with us for two nights!

I’d been really looking forward to it. Not only were we going to hang out on the couch, raid Off-House, and drink chai tea lattes at Starbucks, but I’d also asked her to help me film. For a documentary, I needed some anonymous stock footage (think: unrecognizable woman walking through a park, unrecognizable woman sitting on a bench…), and Charlotte seemed like the perfect stand-in. I also needed to record an interview myself.

Unfortunately, I felt absolutely awful that week. So awful, in fact, that on the way to Off-House I had to give up and ended up going to the hospital instead. (The hospital basically said, “Sorry, we’re too busy, go to a small clinic,” so that’s what I did next.) I’ll write a separate blog about this later, because it’s quite a long story and I still don’t know the entire outcome, but the likely culprit is endometriosis, which in turn causes all kinds of secondary infections. Today I’m starting medication that should stop my period, so it’ll take about a month to see if it actually helps.

Anyway, that day I spent most of my time under a hot shower or lying in bed with a heating pad. The next day, thanks to the antibiotics I got at the clinic, I felt a bit better, so we were able to shoot the documentary footage after all. That same day, Charlotte left for a hotel near Disneyland, where she and that friend (and yes, I am going to confuse you: that friend is also Riemer’s new girlfriend) were going the next day.

Luckily, I already knew the perfect park near Disneyland to film our shots: Kasai Rinkai Koen.

After Disneyland she even found another small gap in her schedule, so we still managed to go to Off-House and get a doria. Just like two years ago.

As I said, I have to take it a bit easy right now. I need to be in the Netherlands for a long stretch in March/April for my new book, so I’m saving as much as I can. I’d actually wanted to go to Shanghai Disneyland with François, but instead we spent the weekend staying at my office. Last week I did squeeze in a tiny trip of my own, to visit Yvonne in Sennan.

Yvonne is a Dutch friend of mine who has a Japanese boyfriend, which means she’s in Japan a lot. Her boyfriend has a house in Sennan, just south of Osaka. Yvonne is, like me, a writer and autistic, so it seemed like a good idea to brainstorm about my new book together.

I booked myself a shinkansen ticket. I could fly too (especially since Yvonne’s boyfriend lives so close to the airport), but price-wise it doesn’t make much difference, and the train is so much more relaxing. I found a cheap ticket: the Platt Kodama, which gets you on the cheapest shinkansen. The Kodama stops at every station, but it’s much cheaper than the faster Nozomi. Instead of 16,000 yen for a one-way Tokyo-Osaka ticket, you pay 11,000 yen. For just 1,000 yen extra you can sit in the green car (business class), so I spent 3.5 hours working in peace, with no one next to me. It was perfect! After that I took a local train, and Yvonne and her boyfriend picked me up from the station by car.

Yvonne’s boyfriend’s house is a traditional Japanese home, with a little shed in the garden (or should I say: tiny house) that’s been converted into a guest room. Super cute! I stayed there for two days. We went to the local bathhouse and the small beach-with-a-Starbucks across from Kansai Airport, and on the first evening Yvonne and her boyfriend cooked a very traditional dish… Dutch stamppot!

The next day we took the train to Wakayama to ride the Medetai train, which I had coincidentally just watched a video about. And yes, I visited the Starbucks there too. Anyone who’s followed me for a while knows I collect prefecture badges in the Starbucks app: little digital stamps that appear when you visit a Starbucks in a prefecture for the first time, and pay with the app. Japan has 47 prefectures, and I’ve visited 36 so far. (Well, actually 37, because I’ve been to Hyogo before, just not while using the app. On the way back I even made a deliberate stop in Nagoya for the Aichi badge, because I’d already been there too – but, again, without the app.)

I also watched part 1 of the K3 Originals documentary with Elyse. Soon (before she leaves Japan – sad!) we’ll watch part 2. Yesterday I went with François to his cousin’s birthday. His cousin is half Japanese, and he has a Japanese wife. Pretty much the entire conversation was in Japanese, which I now understand for about 80%, but afterward I was completely wiped out. We slept at my office, and today we took it slow in Hachioji. We admired the beautiful ginkgo trees and wandered around the thrift store.

These days I sleep in Hachioji a bit more often because I can concentrate better here. Next week I really need to push on with my new book, and I like to hole up when I’m in work mode. I noticed I get overstimulated more quickly at home – there’s so much going on (cats, a bigger house, and happy little François with his endless energy bouncing around…). At the same time, I really do love seeing and talking to people – it’s always a matter of finding the right balance.