Month: October 2025

Right now, I’m sitting at a special café in a special city, having a very special coffee. It’s called Glitch; it’s in Tokyo; it’s highly rated and recommended by a friend.

I had to queue 20 minutes to get in here, and I don’t believe in queuing. But I did, and it was worth it. They let me smell all the beans before picking my roast. The flavors are exquisite. And the coffee is about as smooth as it can be.

The place has a nice vibe as well. The Beatles are playing in the background on an analog sound setup with big speakers. Triptych paintings of samurais grace the otherwise bare walls, and the old, yellow lamps make me feel like I’m in the year 1920.

To top it all off, this is my second cup of joe after nearly five months of abstinence. Special, special, special.

It’s amazing to write in this kind of setup—but anyone can do it. It’s easy to feel inspired when you’re pampered. Mastery is writing in the wrong chair when your back is hurting, after a bad night of sleep, and with only a few minutes to spare.

Special is nice—but special is optional. That’s the important part to remember. Enjoy special when it floats your way, but don’t make it a requirement. You can do what you need to do anytime, anywhere, and under any conditions.

Germans love ice cream, but as always, the exception proves the rule: One of my good friends will only ever eat gelato if it’s at least 30 degrees Celsius outside. Me? I couldn’t care less about the weather. Unless I myself am turning to ice, I can have a scoop any time.

Case in point: Yesterday, it was a breezy 12 degrees. Thankfully, the sun made an afternoon appearance, and so did a craving for gelato. Maybe it was because I’ve eaten ice cream less than a handful of times this year. Regardless, with parlors still open, I figured I’d take a chance.

When I arrived at the closest shop, I learned I wasn’t the only one. Between the people sitting inside, outside, queuing, and those standing around already licking away at their good fortune, at least 50 people were swarming the place. Ha! Ice cream in October. It’s a thing.

Not that, like I did with a friend once, you couldn’t eat it in January, too. And as long as my living room feels cozy, I’m sure I’ll always be down for a bowl.

It’s true that everything in life has its season, but sometimes, the spice comes from what you’ll stick to even after it’s gone out of fashion. Ultimately, there are no rules but the ones you make up for yourself. Enjoy your next scoop of vanilla!

I still remember when I found out I needed glasses at age nine or so. I cried a lot. A few months ago, I realized I can see fine underwater if I’m wearing the swimming goggles but no contact lenses. I still find it fascinating every time I go for some laps in a pool.

First, how did it take me so long to realize this? When I swam regularly, I used to wear lenses. But that’s like wearing glasses, so when I also wear goggles, my underwater vision is blurry, just as it would be if I tried to use my glasses underwater. Only some years ago did I stop bothering wearing lenses for every swim.

Second, why does it work? It must be something about the light being refracted differently underwater, and then perhaps also the goggles acting as some kind of visual aid. I couldn’t find a great answer online, but the result is obvious and clear. I can read signs that are several meters away which I could not read without my glasses above the surface.

Most interestingly, however, how can such a tiny difference affect a man every day for 25 years of his life? The difference between seeing perfectly clearly and only blurry shapes is apparently some water and a plastic screen. Or, above ground, two glass lenses. Why did that margin end up so small, and why does the universe continue to tip one third of all humans just past the edge of not being able to see well with their own two eyes?

There’s a scene in a Simpsons episode where Hans Moleman, known for his notoriously bad sight, gets hit in the eye by randomly shooting lasers. Suddenly, his eyes are repaired. “I can see! It’s a miracle!” Immediately, he gets hit by another laser and, right after, he goes: “Well, you win some, you lose some.”

That’s how I feel about my near-sightedness sometimes. But even if it only seems a coin toss away, remember: It’s not about whether you win or lose. It’s about what you’re going to do with what you have.

A friend was shocked when she went to a French language school for a two-week course in France. “The teacher was old-school,” she said. “She threatened us to not take notes and focus on listening. She’d throw a pen at us otherwise.”

We talked about listening and reading at the same time when learning something new, and about how we commonly watch movies with subtitles just because we’re too lazy to listen properly. “But you can’t read the text when someone’s talking to you at the bakery, can you?” my friend’s teacher said. She had a point.

Real life has no subtitles. Some skills you simply need in the moment. Despite all our technological advancements, you still can’t look up everything in real-time. At least for now. On-demand knowledge is fine in many situations. Know when it’s not, and make sure you bring the tools for the job.

I really loved Netflix’ live adaptation of the One Piece anime. It was eight hours of great TV. I’ve been waiting for the second season ever since. That’s now been two years, and with the release confirmed for 2026, it might have to be another before I get to watch more of this awesome show.

I don’t think about One Piece every day, of course. But every now and then, it pops into my head again. “Oh, what about season two?” I might quickly check if there are any updates on it or re-read a bit about the show on Wikipedia. It’s a habit millions of people share, I imagine, and yet, the dynamic is funny if you think about it. We spend two, three years waiting for, considering, anticipating what will ultimately be a few hours of entertainment. Why don’t we just enjoy it once it shows up?

Commitment has become a scarce resource in show business. It’s nice when producers put more oomph behind something we like—but there’s no need for us to mentally handhold them from afar every step of the way. Production cycles take longer and longer, and who knows? Maybe the show won’t happen in the end. Maybe the star quits, the company goes broke, or creative differences torpedo the production. In the meantime, perhaps we should do what we do best once we put our minds to it: focus on our own creations. Of art. Of kindness. Of connection.

You don’t want to trade years of your life later for seconds of instant gratification now—but you also shouldn’t wait two years for an event that’ll only last a few hours if and when it comes to pass. Just like it’s no good fretting over an exam you’re not currently sitting in, there’s no point in anxiously looking forward to a future source of joy. Stay here, do what you can, and let time figure out the rest.

In the summer, my partner tagged along for the first time to a city fair I visit every year with my friends. Also for the first time, we actually managed to do one loop of the whole thing instead of getting stuck at the first stall. As we came towards the end of our walk, we spotted some claw machines.

There were some Pokémon inside, including a cute Squirtle, so my fiancée suggested I should try my luck. One of my best friends and I both did. Alas, the claw arm was not willing, so we walked home without new stuffed animals, though in no worse spirits.

One month later, my partner and I traveled to Japan. On our first night out in Osaka, we passed by an arcade on the way home. We took a look inside, and, lo and behold, Pokémon claw machines! No Squirtle, this time, but the Eevees were just as cute. “Try it!” my fiancée said. I got some coins, adjusted the arm, hit the button and…wowza! An Eevee as big as my head landed in the winner’s slot on the first try. “No way, amazing!!”

Stars align in their own time. Don’t push them if they don’t want to. It’s enough to try again sometime—the universe will let you know when it’s ready.

When I scroll to a random photo in my phone within the last five years, chances are, it’s my fiancée and I somewhere on vacation. Or eating out. Or exploring a new place in our city or local area. That’s funny, because I haven’t considered myself a big traveler since 2013.

Between 2012 and 2013, I visited many US states and cool destinations, including Hawaii, Sri Lanka, Chicago, Mexico, and Canada, among others. After I came back from my abroad-studies, I decided to settle down and get to work. Make a living online, and so on. I didn’t take many flights in the years that followed, and I had no particular intention of changing anything when I met my now-partner.

But somehow, we’ve traveled a lot since being together. First to see each other, since we were doing long-distance for a while, and then also to spend quality time with one another. We’d both fly to the same place and hang out or take a car and go somewhere once we were in the same location. Still, if anyone were to ask, the answer would be clear: My partner is the one driving our travel activities—and yet, that makes me a traveler as well. That’s kind of amazing, isn’t it?

I now have so many more stories to tell. I can scroll to a random picture in my phone and always find a good memory or some inspiration. And I can print 1,000 photos, stick the best ones to the walls in our house, and propose to the woman I want to marry.

The people you love will quietly change you, and that’s a wonderful thing—because when you grow based on love, all your self will ever do is expand.

“Tonbo” is the Japanese word for “dragonfly.” How do I know? After a long day of walking over 20,000 steps through Kyoto, and a nice dinner, my partner and I ended up in a bar of the same name.

The bartender was well-versed in English, and beyond nice cocktails, he offered jokes, surprises, and advice. For one, he had a massive stack of foreigners’ ID cards, driver licenses, library passes, and more. Expired keepsakes tourists had gifted him over the years. He folded the cutest little origami swan that could not only flap its wings if you pulled its tail, you could even hang it on your glass by its beak. And he told us a secret one could not find in the tourist guide books he allowed us to browse while sitting at his counter: Right next to Fushimi Inari, Kyoto’s “1,000 Gates” shrine and most famous attraction, there was a hidden bamboo forest no one knew about.

Kyoto also has a popular bamboo forest, of course. But unless you go at sunrise, you’ll never get a clean picture, let alone a peaceful experience of wandering through the tall stalks. So instead of ruining our necks amidst a sea of tourists, we decided to take our kind host up on his recommendation the next day.

The shrine sits atop a mountain but covers a big area. It comes with a complete loop trail you can hike all the way up and back down again. Looking at everything in detail takes several hours, but every visitor’s journey begins at the train station. After a short walk through a touristy street with nice shops and food vendors, you enter through the main gate. Then, you traverse the grounds until you reach the first set of the shrines’ famous torii gates, which is where your ascent truly begins.

Right next to those gates, a small path veers off into the woods. Just a few steps in, we were all by ourselves. For the next 50 meters or so, we walked right beside the gates through which hundreds of tourists kept squeezing. It was a fascinating perspective, not just of the shrine, but of the people, too. After a wide bend, a toilet house, and a few more minutes on a forest path, we saw it. “Only those with good luck will find this place,” a laminated sign, bolted to a concrete pillar, read.

The forest was small, and the path through it short, but it was still beautiful, and, perhaps most importantly, entirely deserted. We didn’t encounter a single person on our way there or back. We could take pictures in our own time, enjoy the view, and get a bit of “real jungle feeling” given our more natural surroundings. Then, we walked back and began our climb, joining our fellow tourists once more.

We all want to see the main event. That’s a fine aspiration to have, and even if we miss it, we might stumble into a wonderful alternative. But what’s also worth aspiring to is looking at what’s around the main event. That’s often a matter of listening more so than seeking, yet it can yield just as fruitful, sometimes even better results.

Every now and then, the right place for you will lie next to the main event. Just like a little bar in a small alley off the main road did for us—for it led us to yet another backstage worth peeking into. Tread off the worn path once in a while. It may only take a few meters to find what everyone else is missing.

I don’t sleep well on planes, so my plan for my partner and I’s 12-hour-flight from Munich to Osaka was to stay awake all throughout until we’d go to bed the next day once there. We woke up at 7 AM, took off around 12:30 PM, and landed at midnight our home time—in Japan it was 7 AM, and our new day kicked off immediately. “If I can get through that and then sleep early, I should have no problem with the jet lag,” I concluded.

The first challenge arrived straight after lunch was served on the plane at around 3 PM German time. I was rather tired afterwards, since we also didn’t sleep much the night before—but then I started editing an essay I really wanted to finish, got hooked, and managed to do so over the next two-ish hours.

The next low came more from the conditions of being in a plane than me being tired. When you mostly sit for 12 hours, at some point, your feet, butt, and head—given the air quality in the tin can—will likely start to hurt. I had relaxed a bit after my editing session and wasn’t sure what to do next—but then I played some video games and another two hours flew by.

Eating breakfast at 10 PM wasn’t the problem. Continuing to focus was. I knew I didn’t have the brainpower left to keep reading my philosophy book, so I considered letting some Netflix movie wash over me—but then I remembered a short, punchy new book I could read on my phone. I adjusted the font size so it was comfy to read and kept flicking through the pages. I read half the book before we landed.

Landing came with a new set of challenges in a new country to solve, from custom forms to getting around to freshening up at our hotel before we could enter our room. Naturally, the first hours of the day came and went quickly. We managed to carry the excitement through our check-in time, yet once waiting on the couch for our room, my eyes started closing—but then I showered once we got to the room and managed to stay awake for another hour and a half.

Around 4:30 PM Japan time, I had been up well over 24 hours. I did end up taking a 90-minute nap, but all in all, not only did my tactic work out, I was surprised at how long I managed to maintain it.

Never write yourself off if you still have another plot twist left in the tank—and you almost always have one more invisible ace up your sleeve. “But then I…” Three magical words that will take you farther than any plane.

Over 90% of people in Japan practice Shinto, Buddhism, or a mixture of both as their religion. They’re so lax and nondescript about it, it’s hard to even capture accurate numbers for the statistics. I’m not an expert by any means, but having observed Japanese spirituality much in books, movies, and in the country, it strikes me as the most sustainable form of religion for the modern world for many people.

In Japan, religion is always a “may,” never a “must.” There is no, “do this, or you’ll go to hell.” No prophet to arrive any time soon and “smite down the nonbelievers.” Though very much present throughout Japan’s—like any country’s—history, aggression is notably absent from the spiritual aspects of the culture. You can visit a shrine and pray every day or never do so at all. Both are perfectly acceptable.

Yet, spirituality is always present. There are thousands of shrines, Zen gardens, and religious site dotted throughout every prefecture and every city. You’ll passively “soak up” spiritual energy even if all you do is walk around and look at the pretty sights.

Customs are loosely defined and open to everyone. I can walk into a shrine, bow at the gate, buy a token for 200 yen, donate it, ring the bell, bow, clap, and make a wish—just like every other person in that spot, be they Japanese or a foreigner. The money supports the shrine’s upkeep and staff, and the ritual makes me feel good while reminding me to practice good manners, and not just at shrines. That’s different than a collection bag being passed around during mass, where your neighbors see exactly how much you do or do not donate. There’s less peer pressure. It’s a somewhat commercialized karma system, but it doesn’t feel forced or exploitative.

There are exceptions and extremists in Japan, too, of course. And there’s a lot more here than I could ever cover, plus I still know very little. But I believe religion should feel nice and supportive. It should be a power-up for everyday life, not yet another list of chores and duties to fulfill…or else. It’s nice to follow routines and traditions to get more stability in your life. But when you’re following them just to follow them or please others, they, too, become shackles.

Today, life comes at us hard. Younger generations face as much, if not more, future uncertainty and everyday chaos as older ones. If religion truly wants to help us with our challenges, perhaps it must also change. Thankfully, life is what we do next—and from Christianity to Islam to Hinduism, Buddhism, and, yes, Shinto, the possibilities are wide open to all of us.