My next trip abroad is going to be Georgia! I’m leaving in about two weeks, so I feel like it’ll be here before I know it. I’m planning to travel for about two and a half weeks, which is a pretty long trip for me. I think of Georgia as one of the most Asian-feeling parts of Europe, with beautiful nature and towns that somehow remind me of Switzerland. On the way there, I’m also going to spend a night in Shanghai, China, which I’m really looking forward to. It’ll also be my first trip abroad in about a year, since I went to Mongolia. I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence or not, but somehow my solo trips abroad tend to happen around turning points in my life. When I went to Cambodia, I had just broken up with my girlfriend. When I went to Mongolia, things weren’t going well with my new girlfriend, and I was exhausted from wondering whether we should break up. It was also right before I moved out on my own for the first time. And this time, with Georgia, I’ve just broken up with my girlfriend again, and I’m about to make my second big move—from Osaka to Tokyo. Every time I travel, there seems to be something going on in my life that I need to think through. While I’m abroad, I spend a lot of time reflecting on those things and trying to figure out how I really feel. Maybe part of the reason I plan these trips in the first place is because I want some time and space to sort things out. Either way, traveling alone gives me a lot of time to face myself and think about my life. And somehow, by the time I come home, I always feel much clearer and more refreshed.

It feels like a lot of things in my life have been changing lately. Right now, I live in Osaka, Japan’s second city, while working remotely for a company based in Tokyo. However, starting next April, I’ll need to go into the Tokyo office much more frequently. Because of that, I’ll be moving to Tokyo around December, just three or four months from now. It has only been about ten months since I started living on my own in Osaka, and now I already have to move again—this time to Tokyo. The possibility of moving to Tokyo had come up several times before, but I stubbornly refused. I hate crowds, and more importantly, I had a girlfriend in Osaka. But by pure coincidence, my girlfriend and I officially broke up just a week ago, and then yesterday, I was told by my company that I would need to move to Tokyo. What strange timing. Until now, I had always hated the idea of moving to Tokyo. But somehow, this time, I can see it as a small turning point in my life—and that makes me feel a little more positive about going. Of course, moving takes a lot of time and energy, so I’ll have to brace myself for it. Still, I’m actually a little excited about this new chapter. The painful part is that moving always costs so much money, though...

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be compatible with someone as a person. I’m generally the kind of person who can get along with almost anyone. But I also think there is a separate question of whether or not I truly click with someone. If I had to draw the line myself, I would say that getting along with someone means being able to maintain a relationship with them, while truly clicking with someone means being able to be myself without forcing anything. When I think about what it means to be myself without forcing anything, it looks something like this: - I don’t spend too much time after meeting them wondering, “Did I say something weird?” - I don’t have to adjust my opinions to match what I think they would like to hear. - Even when we disagree, it doesn’t feel as though the relationship itself might fall apart. - I don’t feel pressured to say something funny or keep the conversation going. For me, how much I do these things seems to vary quite a lot depending on the person. None of them are necessarily bad. When I meet someone for the first time, or when I still don’t know them very well, these things almost always happen. But with someone I truly click with, those walls tend to come down quickly, and I gradually become able to be myself without trying so hard. With many people, however, those walls remain no matter how many times we meet. Of course, the more easily you can get along with anyone, the harder it may be to distinguish between “I don’t dislike this person,” “I can get along with this person without any problems,” and “I genuinely click with this person.” Still, this is how I define compatibility for myself. I also think the biggest key to reaching this kind of relationship is whether our smiles and sense of when to laugh are in sync. More broadly, it comes down to the way someone listens. When I’m talking to someone who only laughs when something is genuinely funny, I find myself pausing for a moment before saying anything. If that happens in every conversation, it becomes exhausting. It creates a negative cycle: I become less comfortable saying what I really want to say, and as a result, the other person probably becomes less comfortable too. That doesn’t mean someone has to smile constantly or laugh at everything. It is simply about the way they listen. When someone smiles, I find it easier to talk to them. I relax, and I gradually feel able to say whatever is on my mind. So perhaps the people I truly click with are the ones who can laugh even at the silly, unremarkable things I say.

I spent the whole day at a tennis tournament. I went with two friends I met at tennis school. We played singles matches in the morning and doubles in the afternoon. There is something interesting about making friends in a place completely separate from work and the rest of my usual world. One of them is moving to Australia next year and also has a fascinating job. He always has so many stories about things I know nothing about, which makes talking to him really interesting. The other has a job completely different from mine, and his lifestyle and interests are also very different from my own. That makes spending time with him interesting too. One of the main reasons I started playing tennis six months ago was the chance to meet people like this, so I’m really happy that it has actually happened. Starting next week, I’m planning to skip tennis school and rent a court with them once or twice a week after work instead. By the way, I got absolutely destroyed in my matches.

It has been a year since I started writing this diary. I’ve never been very good at sticking with things, so I’m honestly surprised that I’ve managed to keep this diary going for a whole year. I wrote 57 entries over the past year, which works out to about one or two entries a week. That doesn’t sound like much when I put it that way, but I still think it’s pretty great that I kept going. I started thinking about why I’ve been able to continue. Writing here feels a little like telling my family or friends, “Hey, this happened to me the other day!” It feels as though someone is listening to me. Because of that, even the things I would normally keep bottled up inside come out in words as if I were talking to someone, and I feel a little lighter after I finish writing. I think this diary has become both an outlet for stress and a kind of emotional support—a place where I can share the things that happen in my life, almost as if I were talking to someone close to me. In the past, I tried writing in planners and diary apps that only I could see, but I could never keep it up. So I think my strategy of publishing my diary online has worked. The format of one photo plus some writing has worked well too. It makes me want to capture things in photos more often, and looking back at them later is interesting. Most of the photos are just ordinary scenes from everyday life. But when I look at the same place a year later, it somehow looks different, even though physically, nothing may have changed at all. Maybe it’s because the combination of the photo and the words gives the scene a small meaning of its own. Even when the place itself is exactly the same, it looks different to me a year later. I find that really interesting. Sometimes, before taking a photo, I even wonder how I’ll see it several years from now. Since I started writing this diary, I feel like the way I go through everyday life has changed, just a little. So, to sum up everything I just said: I’m pretty amazing for somehow managing to lazily keep this diary going for a whole year.