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.

Recently, I found a nice park near my place. There’s a playground structure shaped like a hill, covered with slides—enough for about ten people to slide down at the same time. It feels really nice to lie flat on my back with my arms and legs spread out in the middle of it. It makes me feel like I have the whole park to myself. On a bench near the slides, there’s almost always a cat pretending not to look at me while definitely keeping an eye on me. Going there clears my head and feels really good. But since I usually go after work when it’s already dark, for some reason I always feel a little negative on the way home. Maybe I start imagining myself as the main character in a movie who has just suffered some kind of setback and is sitting alone in a park, lost in thought. Then I get a little too into the role. As I walk home, part of me also thinks I’m being kind of weird and cringey. Anyway, I came home feeling sad, so I wrote this diary entry. I feel a little better now.

I’m starting to feel like traveling abroad again. I’ve always been a little stingy, so whenever I think about traveling, I look at how much money I have saved and sometimes hesitate to spend it. That’s exactly how I feel right now. Depending on the destination, a round-trip flight can cost around 100,000 yen. Then I start thinking, “I could buy a computer with that!” or “I could get a really nice bicycle!” That way of thinking sometimes stops me from traveling abroad. I’ve felt this way before, but traveling has always been worth the money. I’ve been to a few countries, including Mongolia, Australia, and Cambodia. Whenever I travel, I feel as if everything has been refreshed. Going to another country takes me away from what is considered normal in Japan. The things I was worried about back home suddenly seem small, so I can escape from reality for a while and feel as if something inside me has been reset. (Even though nothing has actually been reset.) To put it dramatically, traveling makes me feel like saying, “All right, it’s time to start the next chapter of my life!” (Although, in the end, my life never changes enough to truly feel like a new chapter has begun.) I love traveling abroad because it gives me that feeling of refreshment, and lately, I’ve been wanting to experience it again. My last trip abroad was to Mongolia a year ago, and before that, I went to Australia two years ago. I’d like to travel abroad about once a year. Speaking of Mongolia, I spent seven or eight days traveling with people from several different countries. A few days ago, one of the friends I met there sent me a message on Instagram. During our trip, she had been taking photos with a film camera. She recently had the film developed and found a few photos of me, so she sent them to me. I thought there was something really special about that. The photos were taken a year ago, but only recently were they developed, turned into something we could actually see, and shared with me. One of those photos is the photo I used for this diary entry. It shows me sitting alone in the Mongolian grasslands early in the morning, quietly staring into the distance and doing nothing in particular. I was quite far away from my friends at the time, so I had no idea that someone had taken a photo of me. Finding out a year later that she had secretly captured that moment was a real surprise. For an entire year, those memories existed without us knowing what they would look like. Now, they have finally taken shape. Seeing the photos brought those wonderful memories back to life and made them feel even more special. Seeing those photos made me appreciate film cameras even more, and being reminded of how much fun I had in Mongolia made me want to travel again. Those feelings are what inspired me to write about traveling today.

About two months ago, I finally reached 65 kg, which is almost 10 kg heavier than I was about six months earlier. I once wrote a journal entry titled _"From 55kg to 60kg,"_ and now I've finally reached the 65 kg milestone that I'd been aiming for. People around me have started noticing the change, and even when I tell someone I've always been the type of person who struggles to gain weight, they no longer react as if I'm obviously skinny. That makes me really happy. I still have a long way to go with strength training, but I feel like I've accomplished my goal of gaining weight. From here on, I want to maintain my current weight while continuing to build muscle so that I can develop a balanced, healthy physique. To reach 65 kg, I had to eat a lot more than usual and really push myself. Now that I've reached my goal, I don't feel the need to force myself to gain any more weight. As long as I can stay around 65 kg, I'll be satisfied. I had actually been worried that maintaining my weight might be just as difficult as gaining it. Surprisingly, though, I've been able to stay around 65 kg for about two months without putting in nearly as much effort. I still eat a little more than I used to, but nothing extreme. Over the past couple of weeks in particular, work has been so busy that there were quite a few days when I couldn't eat much for lunch or dinner. Even so, every time I stepped onto the scale, I was nervous that I might have lost weight. Instead, my weight hadn't changed at all, which made me really happy. I honestly have no idea why.

I've been taking tennis lessons since March, so it's been about four months now. Lately, tennis has become my biggest hobby. It's the thing I enjoy the most right now. Tennis is an individual sport, but during practice it often feels like a team sport, and that's one of the things I like about it. I used to be a swimmer, and swimming is completely individual. Tennis is technically an individual sport as well, but because it only exists through playing with someone else, it never really feels like something you do alone. I've always preferred individual sports, but I think this balance—being an individual sport while still letting everyone laugh, encourage each other, and enjoy the game together—is what makes tennis so appealing. It also helps that it's a sport where it's easy to notice your own improvement when you keep practicing, and that sense of progress makes it even more enjoyable. Until recently, I hadn't been doing much exercise that really made me sweat, so tennis has been great for my health as well. I want to keep improving until I can hit the ball with real power and confidence.