The Day I Realized What Freedom Means to Me
While listening to 13-sai no Hello Work (Hello Work for 13-Year-Olds),
a thought suddenly came to me.
“What is it that I truly want?”
And the first thing that appeared in my mind
wasn’t money.
It was freedom.
But then I began to wonder:
What does freedom actually mean to me?
As I sat with that question,
one phrase deeply resonated with me.
The freedom to choose.
I have to leave the house at this time.
I have to get on this train.
I have to get off at this station.
Maybe those are ordinary things in everyday life.
But for me,
they often felt restrictive and exhausting.
On days when I don’t go to work,
I feel an incredible sense of freedom.
Right now,
it still isn’t enough to fully support my life financially.
But while thinking,
“I hope this will someday become a real source of income,”
I spend my time editing videos,
filming,
sitting in front of my computer wondering,
“Maybe I should do it this way…
Or maybe that way…”
I organize my thoughts,
reflect,
and before I know it,
I’ve been sitting there for three hours.
And strangely,
it doesn’t feel painful at all.
It feels natural.
Meanwhile today,
I spent only a short amount of time at work,
and yet I felt deeply uncomfortable.
For some reason,
everything I did felt like it might later become a problem.
Maybe someone would criticize me.
Maybe I was doing something wrong.
I could feel myself shrinking inward.
And I was surprised
that the exact same “time”
could feel so completely different.
When I first read 13-sai no Hello Work years ago,
to be honest,
it didn’t really resonate with me.
It was a popular book,
but I couldn’t understand what I was supposed to gain from it.
But now, at 32 years old,
I find myself listening to it with complete attention.
It feels like an entirely different book.
I think it’s because
the questions inside me have changed.
I’m no longer asking,
“What job should I do?”
I’m asking,
“How do I want to live?”
To me,
“realigning myself” does not mean becoming perfect.
It means noticing
what feels right for me
and what does not.
And then,
trusting that feeling enough
to slowly choose again and again.
I realized that this process itself
is what “realigning” truly means.
For me, freedom means
being able to choose.
Where I go.
What I do.
Who I spend time with.
What I think about.
To be able to choose those things for myself.
Today,
I finally realized that.
And honestly,
I don’t think I can go back to the way I was before.
But I think that’s okay.
Because for the first time,
it feels like I’ve started living honestly
according to my own inner sense.
March 2026
Practicing Noticing World 1, and Returning to World 2
Recently, I realized something.
Whenever I listen to talks about the mindset of successful people or personal growth,
I somehow end up thinking about relationships at work.
“If I handled things a little differently,
would it feel easier there?”
Without noticing it,
I was always searching for answers about how to behave better inside World 1 — my workplace.
At work, I am always a little defensive.
I try hard not to let my energy be drained.
Somewhere inside, I believed this environment was a stage I was meant to overcome.
But one day, I suddenly thought:
Wait.
What if I spent more time thinking about how I want to be—
as someone who makes videos,
as someone who writes words,
as someone who lives in World 2?
Whenever I think about work,
I feel heavy.
But from Saturday to Monday,
I feel genuinely happy.
Everything can be decided by my own choice.
I have Moriyan as my partner.
I have people who support Sushi Couple.
I have my family.
For a long time, I believed:
“I need to overcome World 1.”
But then I realized something.
The moment I try to “overcome” it,
my mind is already standing inside World 1.
So I decided on a new practice.
- Thoughts about World 1 appear
- I notice: “Ah, I’m thinking about work again.”
- I do not judge it
- I bring my attention back to World 2
- I take one small action
They say the brain does not judge reality
by how many times you think about something,
but by how many times you act.
So I keep building small actions in World 2.
Waking up before sunrise and breathing the morning air.
Tidying the kitchen.
Taking out the trash.
Reflecting like this.
Stopping by the food court at Ito-Yokado after work
to continue editing a video.
That is already a real part of World 2.
No matter what happens at work,
I can begin my day in World 2,
and end my day in World 2.
I can go home thinking,
“I truly lived in World 2 today.”
And then simply keep repeating that.
To realign myself
does not mean erasing World 1.
It means noticing World 1,
and quietly returning to World 2.
And once I return,
taking small but certain actions there.
Today again,
I am choosing World 2.
World 2 is not some distant ideal.
It already exists
inside the actions I chose today.
March 2026
The Pulse of Resolve
The night before last, I had a frightening dream.
Two foreign men who said they were interested in Japanese houses came to visit our home.
At first, I treated them kindly, the way we usually would as Sushi Couple.
But something felt off.
They wanted to look around the house.
They tried to enter the other rooms as well.
Something isn’t right.
Even while feeling that,
I ended up moving with them into the living room.
The moment I tried to watch carefully for anything suspicious,
one of the men casually placed something on the table.
This is bad.
I knew it instantly.
I grabbed it and tried to throw it away.
But it was some kind of poisonous gas.
Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.
My chest tightened.
My lungs would not work.
I pulled Moriyan toward the entrance as hard as I could,
because he didn’t yet understand what was happening.
Whether we made it outside or not—
I woke up in the middle of that fear of death.
It felt painfully real.
After waking, a thought came to me.
Maybe I had been trying to be kind to everyone
simply because they were foreigners.
Of course, kindness matters.
But at the same time,
I realized I need to meet people not as categories,
but as individuals.
It was as if the dream were telling me:
Kindness alone is not enough.
You also need boundaries.
Then something else happened.
There was a message I had been happily replying to,
when Moriyan casually said,
“This might be a little suspicious.”
The moment he said that,
I remembered the dream.
I asked for advice elsewhere,
and was told it was likely a scam.
At that instant,
the area around my solar plexus tightened sharply.
If I hadn’t noticed…
If I had continued talking…
If I had gone further…
The thought suddenly terrified me,
and I couldn’t sleep.
But that fear revealed something deeper.
For a long time, I’ve been afraid of:
being disliked,
disappointing people,
losing trust.
The kind of themes often written about in books like The Courage to Be Disliked.
I had always felt this was something
I would need to face someday.
I just didn’t expect it to arrive like this.
When I looked closer,
I realized I’m not truly afraid of being disliked itself.
What I fear is:
losing trust,
letting people down,
being looked at coldly,
becoming isolated.
That likely comes from past experiences.
But deeper than even that,
I sensed something more fundamental.
What I truly fear is:
being made to feel that I have no value.
The moment I saw that clearly,
the fear began to change shape.
My heart was still pounding in my solar plexus.
But it no longer felt like some nameless terror.
Instead, I found myself thinking:
Ah… so that’s what this is.
Maybe this wasn’t fear of danger at all.
Maybe it was the trembling that comes
when touching an old wound inside yourself.
I’ve been through many painful moments in life.
And each time, I tried to believe:
Maybe this is the sign before growth.
That is how I moved through them.
This time feels similar.
But also different.
I had never felt fear so intense
that my body reacted this strongly.
Honestly, I was surprised
that the brain could create such a physical response.
It was so overwhelming
that I couldn’t imagine it might be leading me toward healing.
Even now,
there is still a slight discomfort in my solar plexus.
But it no longer feels like terror.
Instead, it feels more like standing in front of something important.
A nervous kind of heartbeat.
I don’t know whether I can overcome this theme.
But I do know this:
I am standing at the entrance to that next stage.
So this pulse I feel now
is not the pulse of fear.
It may be—
the pulse of resolve.
February 2026
Part 2: Not a Straight Path, but a Garden
As I kept reading the article,
I began to see what Noriko truly loved.
She had loved plants and flowers since she was a child.
On her way to kindergarten in Kamakura,
she once found herself gazing at tiny blue flowers—
Veronica persica—
and before she knew it, nearly three hours had passed.
Later, in Tokyo,
she filled her apartment balcony with over a hundred potted plants.
And at the age of 54,
she moved to the foot of Mt. Fuji.
As I read her story,
I found myself thinking about my own past.
The difficult part of working
wasn’t that I disliked the time I spent with my patients.
Actually,
I liked it.
The quiet rehabilitation sessions,
the conversations,
the chance to hear about their lives.
I truly did.
But at the same time,
I felt too much responsibility for everything.
When a patient didn’t get better,
I believed it was because I wasn’t good enough.
So I paid for workshops out of my own pocket,
and spent my days off studying.
Then one day,
a thought came to me.
What was I really trying to escape from?
Was it workplace relationships?
Rules within the organization?
Responsibility?
It wasn’t just those things.
I wanted to be free from everything.
I wanted to live my own time.
I wanted to face myself.
Realizing that
became a turning point for me.
And then,
I remembered who I was as a child.
I loved Chibi Maruko-chan,
and even though I didn’t like reading,
I was completely absorbed in Momoko Sakura’s essays.
Calligraphy,
where I learned to stay with a piece until it felt right to me
—while also learning how to let go and accept it as it is.
Basketball,
where I discovered the joy of improving
and woke up early to practice.
Running in the park
for school marathons.
Practicing on the monkey bars
until my hands were covered in blisters.
Jump rope,
reaching one hundred double-unders in a row.
Back then,
I was always deeply absorbed in something.
People called me hardworking.
But when I look back now,
I don’t think that was it.
I was simply
immersed in what felt fun.
I don’t have the strength
to endure things I dislike
just by forcing myself.
And when I realized that,
I felt strangely free.
Toward the end of the article,
there was a phrase that stayed with me:
“Everything you’ve done will eventually come together.”
At first,
I thought that meant
everything would connect into a single path.
But the writer suggested something different.
Maybe it’s not a straight line.
Maybe it’s more like a garden.
Each experience
taking root in its own way,
forming an open space without boundaries.
When I read that,
something in my chest softened.
A garden feels freer than a straight path.
It can expand in any direction.
And more than anything,
it feels joyful.
Everything I’ve experienced
becomes a seed.
It grows roots,
spreads,
and little by little,
my own garden begins to take shape.
That is exactly
the kind of life I have been imagining.
In the article,
her husband said with a smile,
“Noriko is in the garden from morning until night.”
And she replied,
“Because when I’m in the garden,
there’s always something to do.”
At 84,
she says,
“Now is the best time.
Because I can spend my time
doing what I love.”
That line stopped me.
To spend your time
on what you love.
It might be
the simplest,
and most important thing
in living a joyful life.
I am living my life
for the first time.
So of course,
there are things I don’t understand,
and many uncertainties.
But within that,
I’ve found moments of joy,
and moments of being completely absorbed.
When I was a child,
those feelings were much stronger
than fear or doubt.
As we grow older,
uncertainty grows,
and we begin to care about how others see us.
But maybe it’s like a game.
The further you go,
the harder it becomes.
And that’s exactly
what makes it interesting.
It means
you’ve come this far.
I want to go further.
I want to see what lies ahead.
Because
I am the one
holding the wheel of my life.
The detours,
the confusion,
and the view that opens up beyond them—
all of it
is part of the garden
that is my life.
The Day I Decided, “I Am Here”
That day, we were sitting across from each other
at a Doutor Coffee on Dogenzaka in Shibuya.
It was late July, 2024.
Early afternoon, and the café was crowded with people.
The seats were so close—maybe only 30 centimeters apart—
yet somehow, I didn’t notice anything around us.
We spread an A4 notebook across the small rectangular table,
and Moriyan and I began writing down what we truly wanted to do.
We wanted to travel the world.
To meet people, to exchange cultures and perspectives.
To experience as much as we could.
We put those desires into words, honestly and directly.
But the ending was always the same.
How?
What about money?
Is this even possible for us right now?
The moment we started thinking about it,
we would stop there.
We had already tried many things.
Moriyan considered qualifications to work abroad,
and I started blogs and social media, hoping to work from anywhere.
But each path stopped somewhere along the way.
Sometimes it just didn’t feel right.
Sometimes we felt defeated, thinking it was impossible without money.
It was a cycle we couldn’t break.
But that day felt a little different.
“There must be a way.”
I think we could believe that—not because we were searching for a perfect solution,
but because we were searching for a way not to stop halfway.
If we kept thinking the same way,
we would just return to the same place.
So we tried to stay as calm as possible
and really listen to each other.
The ice in our iced tea had completely melted,
and the napkin underneath was soaked through.
And then, we saw a path.
Maybe we didn’t need to go abroad
to exchange cultures and perspectives.
Maybe we could share our everyday life
from where we already were—
and send it out into the world.
We decided to share our lives on YouTube.
What people call a vlog.
We opened YouTube right there,
wondering if anyone was already doing something similar.
And then we saw him.
Among the popular creators,
there was one young man who felt simple and sincere.
His numbers weren’t huge yet,
but he felt like someone who was steadily growing.
Looking at him, I thought—
Maybe we can do this too.
His presence lowered the barrier of that first step
more than anything else.
“Let’s try.”
The moment we said that,
it felt like our eyes suddenly opened.
We had found something.
I still remember when we uploaded our first video.
There was excitement—like something was about to begin—
and also fear—wondering how people would react.
Those feelings mixed together,
leaving us slightly restless.
To be honest, it felt a little embarrassing.
Especially the thought of people in Japan watching us.
So quietly, in my heart, I hoped—
“I want this to reach people overseas who love Japan.”
When we uploaded our first video,
the only viewers were the two of us.
With the second video, my mother joined—so three.
When the view count reached seven,
we were so happy, thinking someone had found us.
But later, we realized—
it was all just us.
We laughed a little.
Back then,
I wasn’t thinking, “I am here.”
I was simply focused on what was in front of me,
just continuing to post.
But now, looking back—
Maybe that’s exactly what it was.
Nothing is complete yet.
But from that day on,
something definitely began to change.
That’s how I feel.
Coming Full Circle, Back to Here
Over the past couple of days,
something that had been quietly sitting
in the corner of my mind
suddenly came rushing in all at once.
Thoughts about how I want to live.
How I want to work.
About my part-time job.
So many things
passed through my mind
all at the same time.
And within that,
there were a few things
that felt like they quietly settled.
To spend my time here,
in this home,
a little more carefully.
To live in a way
that takes care of this space.
And one more thing.
To simply keep going—
filming, editing, and sharing videos,
little by little.
To keep putting my thoughts into words.
I notice that, again and again,
I tend to feel uneasy about where I am.
I find myself searching
for different ways, different options.
But if I want to change something now,
the kind of work I’m hoping for
can only begin
by actually starting.
Taking one step at a time.
I go around in circles,
thinking and rethinking—
and yet, I always seem to come back here.
So maybe
this really is it.
And in any moment,
all I can do
is what I’m able to do right now.
To acknowledge myself for that,
and gently say,
“It’s okay, this is enough.”
Over the past few days,
there were so many things
I couldn’t quite put into words.
Whenever I tried,
I felt like I got stuck somewhere.
Even when I sat down to write,
it felt distant somehow—
as if there was no real point in writing it at all.
But still,
I feel like it was good.
To go all the way around,
and land back here again.
I feel like I’m doing what I can.
I’m doing what’s within reach.
And being able to feel that—
right now—
somehow feels important.
2026年2月
Part 1: Where the Detours Have Led Me
I recently read an article on Hokuoh Kurashi no Doguten
about Noriko Nagatsuka.
The words she shared stayed with me—
they felt so close to where I am right now.
Noriko loves plants and flowers.
But it wasn’t something she had always been aware of.
She said that it was only in looking back
that she realized how much she had loved them all along.
When she was younger,
she often felt that she was “half-hearted in everything.”
Perhaps one reason was that she lived alongside her husband, Seiji,
who had devoted himself wholeheartedly to his work in photography.
As I read her story,
I found myself thinking about my own mornings.
Moriyan wakes up at 4 a.m. every day.
As soon as the alarm rings, he gets up and goes out for a walk.
After about an hour, he comes back home
and studies English vocabulary.
His day has a clear rhythm—
everything is planned,
and he quietly builds consistency, day by day.
When I watch him,
I can’t help but think,
“That’s amazing.”
And me—
I hear the alarm.
I hear him leave the house.
I hear him come back.
And still,
I can’t peel myself out of bed.
Half awake,
I play an affirmation video,
turn on the air conditioner,
and wait for my body to wake up on its own.
We have breakfast together at 7.
After that,
he goes back to his desk.
And me?
What should I do?
What do I want to do?
There’s a small sense of guilt
in not having anything decided.
Maybe I should be more disciplined.
Maybe I should plan my days better.
It was around that time
that I came across Noriko’s words.
When she lived in Tokyo,
she worked many different jobs.
At a sake brewery,
launching an apparel shop,
running a sculptor’s gallery,
working at an antique store,
and eventually supporting her husband’s photography work.
She kept changing jobs as opportunities came her way,
because she felt she had never fully committed to any of them.
During that time,
her husband would often say to her:
“Everything you’ve done will come together one day.”
Back then, she wondered,
“Will that day really come?”
When I read that line,
I thought about my own career.
Since becoming a physical therapist in 2016,
I’ve moved from place to place—
hospitals, home-visit rehab, orthopedic clinics, home nursing.
Each time,
I thought that maybe the next place
would bring me closer to the way I truly wanted to live and work.
But it never quite worked that way.
Looking back now,
I feel that I was simply searching for a place
where I could at least keep myself together.
At that time,
I often thought of Steve Jobs’ words:
“Connecting the dots.”
The dots only connect when you look back.
Someday,
I wanted to be able to say,
“Because I went through that,
I am here now.”
Believing that,
I kept moving forward.
But to be honest,
there was always a quiet voice inside me asking:
Will that day really come?
Before “Getting Yourself Together”
Recently, I’ve realized something again.
I have a Pilates certification,
but I don’t live what people would probably call
“the Pilates instructor lifestyle.”
I’m not someone who stretches every single day,
maintains a perfectly sculpted body,
and spends every waking hour immersed in Pilates.
In fact,
I’m probably quite far from that image.
And because of that,
I carried a deep insecurity for a long time.
“I’m not instructor-like enough.”
“The version of myself I create for filming is fake.”
Thoughts like that stayed quietly inside me,
and some days,
they made filming feel heavy.
But lately,
something finally settled deeply into place inside me.
Even if I don’t train my body every day,
I’m extremely sensitive to small shifts and discomforts within it.
“Oh, I’m leaning slightly to the right today.”
“This posture is going to strain my lower back.”
“My breathing has become shallow.”
I can notice those tiny changes.
And I don’t think that sensitivity is some special talent.
I think it grew naturally from my desire
to live authentically and healthily
through this long life ahead of me.
I want to have a body that feels well.
I want to keep living with curiosity.
I want to create a peaceful future
with the people I love.
That desire slowly brought me closer
to my own body.
For most of my life,
I’ve had a habit of getting swallowed by “I have to.”
I have to exercise every day.
I have to keep stretching.
I have to build a workout habit.
And the more determined I became,
the more disappointed I felt
when I couldn’t keep it going.
“Not being able to continue”
quickly became,
“I’m not good enough.”
That’s how easily I lowered my own self-image.
Then one day,
I noticed something.
When my mind becomes unsettled,
my room becomes messy.
And when my room becomes messy,
my mind becomes unsettled.
For me,
my inner state always appears honestly in my surroundings.
One day,
I slowly looked around my room.
Things left sitting on the floor.
Papers stacked on the desk.
Small objects I didn’t need anymore,
yet somehow couldn’t throw away.
They looked almost like physical versions
of mental noise.
And then I realized something.
Before dieting.
Before exercise.
Before “trying harder.”
What I truly needed first
was the thing that comes before getting yourself together.
What I needed
was space.
Margin.
Breathing room.
Quietness.
When I create space in my room,
space appears in my mind too.
And somehow,
even my breathing changes.
Strangely enough,
when my room feels lighter,
I naturally start wanting to move my body.
Not stretching because I have to,
but because my body naturally wants to lengthen and breathe.
When I started trusting that feeling,
the suffocating pressure of
“I have to do Pilates every day”
slowly disappeared.
When there is space,
we naturally want to return to balance.
When there is no space,
even the act of “self-care” becomes exhausting.
That order—
that sequence—
became a very important realization for me.
My body doesn’t look like
the stereotypical Pilates instructor body
people admire online.
But now,
I’m no longer ashamed of that.
Because I like the version of myself
that notices when something is off.
When I leave myself neglected for too long,
I feel farther away from myself.
But the very moment I notice it—
that moment itself
is the sign that I’m already returning.
And I treasure that moment deeply.
Before trying to maintain exercise routines,
first create a small pocket of space in your life.
Even one small corner of a room is enough.
Even the space of a single chair is enough.
Just enough for light to enter.
When there is space,
the body begins to breathe naturally.
The heart softens naturally.
And we begin wanting to care for ourselves again.
I finally understood myself.
I don’t actually want to become
a beautiful Pilates instructor.
I simply want to feel aligned.
And I think “getting yourself together”
is not about forcing effort.
It’s about returning.
So it’s okay to have messy days.
Okay to feel motivated sometimes
and discouraged other times.
Okay to feel balanced one day
and completely off the next.
Because swaying is natural.
The version of myself I truly want to become
is someone who can accept those daily fluctuations with gentleness.
There was a time when I admired
the world’s image of the “perfect instructor,”
and felt inferior because I couldn’t become that.
But now—
I genuinely love the version of myself
who is learning to return to balance
through everyday life itself.
Before “Getting Yourself Together”
Recently, I’ve realized something again.
I have a Pilates certification,
but I don’t live what people would probably call
“the Pilates instructor lifestyle.”
I’m not someone who stretches every single day,
maintains a perfectly sculpted body,
and spends every waking hour immersed in Pilates.
In fact,
I’m probably quite far from that image.
And because of that,
I carried a deep insecurity for a long time.
“I’m not instructor-like enough.”
“The version of myself I create for filming is fake.”
Thoughts like that stayed quietly inside me,
and some days,
they made filming feel heavy.
But lately,
something finally settled deeply into place inside me.
Even if I don’t train my body every day,
I’m extremely sensitive to small shifts and discomforts within it.
“Oh, I’m leaning slightly to the right today.”
“This posture is going to strain my lower back.”
“My breathing has become shallow.”
I can notice those tiny changes.
And I don’t think that sensitivity is some special talent.
I think it grew naturally from my desire
to live authentically and healthily
through this long life ahead of me.
I want to have a body that feels well.
I want to keep living with curiosity.
I want to create a peaceful future
with the people I love.
That desire slowly brought me closer
to my own body.
For most of my life,
I’ve had a habit of getting swallowed by “I have to.”
I have to exercise every day.
I have to keep stretching.
I have to build a workout habit.
And the more determined I became,
the more disappointed I felt
when I couldn’t keep it going.
“Not being able to continue”
quickly became,
“I’m not good enough.”
That’s how easily I lowered my own self-image.
Then one day,
I noticed something.
When my mind becomes unsettled,
my room becomes messy.
And when my room becomes messy,
my mind becomes unsettled.
For me,
my inner state always appears honestly in my surroundings.
One day,
I slowly looked around my room.
Things left sitting on the floor.
Papers stacked on the desk.
Small objects I didn’t need anymore,
yet somehow couldn’t throw away.
They looked almost like physical versions
of mental noise.
And then I realized something.
Before dieting.
Before exercise.
Before “trying harder.”
What I truly needed first
was the thing that comes before getting yourself together.
What I needed
was space.
Margin.
Breathing room.
Quietness.
When I create space in my room,
space appears in my mind too.
And somehow,
even my breathing changes.
Strangely enough,
when my room feels lighter,
I naturally start wanting to move my body.
Not stretching because I have to,
but because my body naturally wants to lengthen and breathe.
When I started trusting that feeling,
the suffocating pressure of
“I have to do Pilates every day”
slowly disappeared.
When there is space,
we naturally want to return to balance.
When there is no space,
even the act of “self-care” becomes exhausting.
That order—
that sequence—
became a very important realization for me.
My body doesn’t look like
the stereotypical Pilates instructor body
people admire online.
But now,
I’m no longer ashamed of that.
Because I like the version of myself
that notices when something is off.
When I leave myself neglected for too long,
I feel farther away from myself.
But the very moment I notice it—
that moment itself
is the sign that I’m already returning.
And I treasure that moment deeply.
Before trying to maintain exercise routines,
first create a small pocket of space in your life.
Even one small corner of a room is enough.
Even the space of a single chair is enough.
Just enough for light to enter.
When there is space,
the body begins to breathe naturally.
The heart softens naturally.
And we begin wanting to care for ourselves again.
I finally understood myself.
I don’t actually want to become
a beautiful Pilates instructor.
I simply want to feel aligned.
And I think “getting yourself together”
is not about forcing effort.
It’s about returning.
So it’s okay to have messy days.
Okay to feel motivated sometimes
and discouraged other times.
Okay to feel balanced one day
and completely off the next.
Because swaying is natural.
The version of myself I truly want to become
is someone who can accept those daily fluctuations with gentleness.
There was a time when I admired
the world’s image of the “perfect instructor,”
and felt inferior because I couldn’t become that.
But now—
I genuinely love the version of myself
who is learning to return to balance
through everyday life itself.
December 14, 2025
The Flow That Begins with Freedom and Spaciousness
Last night,
I found myself opening my phone again and again,
scrolling through information
without any real purpose.
Whenever I feel anxious or unsettled,
I have a habit of thinking,
“I need to do something.”
And then I start moving frantically.
But yesterday,
somewhere in the middle of all that,
I suddenly noticed something.
“Ah… I’m in my ‘being chased’ mode again.”
The moment I realized that,
my breathing became a little deeper.
And after that,
I quietly went to sleep.
Then morning came.
Instead of immediately opening my computer
to continue where I left off,
I chose something different first.
I chose something
that made me feel freedom and spaciousness.
At the center of my personal statement,
there is one sentence:
“Freedom and spaciousness are my source.”
When I have freedom and spaciousness,
I naturally become more honest with myself.
And when that honesty returns,
curiosity quietly begins to appear again.
Then,
almost naturally,
I start becoming interested in people,
in life,
in the world around me.
And somewhere beyond that flow,
I think there is the peaceful circle of connection
I truly want to create.
This morning,
I remembered that order again—
not in my mind,
but in my body.
When I act from anxiety,
everything becomes heavy.
When I act from freedom and spaciousness,
things begin to move naturally.
Such a simple truth.
And yet,
I want to keep rediscovering it
through my everyday life,
again and again,
slowly deepening my understanding of it.
November 30, 2025
The Foundation Called Confidence
Lately,
I’ve started thinking,
“I’d like to try living as someone who writes books.”
It wasn’t a sudden realization.
Looking back,
I think it was something I had quietly admired
for a very long time.
People who write while living their everyday lives.
I think I’ve always been drawn to that kind of life.
(Though honestly,
the part I love most might simply be
“working from home at my own pace.”)
While we were talking about it,
Moriyan casually said,
“Maybe I should try finding
something I truly want to do, too.”
A little while ago,
we each tried listing words
that felt important to us.
For me,
those words eventually formed
something like a pyramid of values.
First comes freedom and spaciousness.
Because of that,
I can be honest with myself.
From honesty,
curiosity begins to grow.
And at the end of that flow,
there is peace.
That was the order I found.
Moriyan, on the other hand,
listed around ten different words.
Honesty.
Sincerity.
Humility.
Perseverance.
Frugality.
Discipline.
Confidence.
Passion.
At the time,
he couldn’t remember the last few.
But later he recalled them:
Courage.
Growth through effort.
Compassion.
Unlike mine,
his words didn’t seem to have an order yet.
They felt as though
they were still quietly floating in the air.
But somehow,
I found myself thinking this:
Maybe the foundation beneath all of Moriyan’s values
is confidence.
Moriyan often says
he lacks confidence.
Maybe certain experiences in his life
made him feel that way.
But honestly,
I don’t see him that way at all.
Because someone who is honest,
sincere,
humble,
constantly learning,
and compassionate—
I don’t think that kind of person
could truly be empty inside.
Ways of being like that
can only stand on top of
a very strong foundation.
When I told Moriyan this,
he thought quietly for a moment and said,
“Then I just need to build confidence.”
But somehow,
that wording didn’t feel quite right to me.
Is confidence really something
we “gain” afterward?
I think it may be the opposite.
I think confidence is something
that already exists inside us.
Life simply makes it shake.
We become anxious.
We lose our way.
We start doubting ourselves.
But then we return.
When we waver,
we return.
When we waver,
we return again.
And by repeating that process,
we slowly strengthen
the foundation within ourselves.
In a way,
it feels very similar
to taking care of the body.
Posture,
breathing—
we can’t maintain perfect alignment forever.
Of course we collapse sometimes.
Of course we get tired.
But if we know
where our center is,
we can always return to it.
Confidence might be the same.
I believe Moriyan is someone
who will accomplish many things
through passion and courage.
He’s not the kind of person
who shows off what he can do.
But he naturally earns trust.
Quietly.
Steadily.
And whatever he gains,
I think he’ll gently give back to others.
When I picture him,
I see someone like
a kind and gentle leader.
Of course,
this is only a vision of the future.
There’s no need
to decide everything right now.
But lately,
I’ve been thinking this:
Maybe the things we truly want to do
don’t suddenly fall from the sky one day.
Maybe they already exist quietly inside us.
The small moments of:
“That feels nice.”
“I like that.”
“I kind of want to try it.”
Those feelings
have probably been there all along.
One day,
we simply notice them.
And I think
the same is true for Moriyan.
I think it’s already there inside him too.
Quietly waiting.
November 20, 2026
Living as Myself
What kind of person do I want to be?
Living my own life
is much harder than I once imagined.
Before I realize it,
I can so easily be swept along
by the people around me.
Even when I think I’m making my own choices,
sometimes I’m really just trying
to become someone else.
Or maybe,
I’m simply working desperately
to be accepted.
Ever since I was little,
I’ve always been drawn
to people who seemed deeply grounded in themselves.
People who carried
a quiet sense of authenticity.
A kind of calm energy
that felt undeniably their own.
Whenever I met someone like that,
I admired them.
But lately,
I’ve started to wonder
if it was never just admiration.
Maybe it was something deeper.
Maybe it was the force
pulling me toward becoming myself.
The thing that keeps whispering:
“Live your own life.”
Maybe that has always been
one of the deepest sources inside me.
November 2026
Living While Simply Living
There are many people in this world
who seem to truly live through their everyday lives.
People like Momoko Sakura, whom I’ve loved since childhood,
or Naomi Takayama, who writes books and picture books alongside her cooking,
or Anne Watanabe, whose many interests seem to naturally blend into her life.
I’ve always been drawn to people like that—
people whose lives themselves feel worth following.
At first,
I think I wanted to become someone like them.
I tried to shape myself
around the people I admired.
But one day,
I realized something.
I am already standing
on the path I’ve lived.
The moments I got lost.
The detours.
The seasons when I couldn’t choose.
All of it
has become who I am now.
I still want to write while living my life.
Someday,
I’d love to write books,
to be interviewed,
to build a life and way of working
similar to the people I admire.
That feeling hasn’t changed.
But I no longer think
the road there
is something I can reach
by tracing someone else’s footsteps.
The path has to become my own.
So then,
what is uniquely mine?
Whenever I ask myself that question,
I always return
to the body.
As a physiotherapist,
I’ve spent years
observing bodies,
listening to bodies,
and learning how to communicate through them.
For a long time,
I thought I had walked straight along that road.
But one day,
a question quietly appeared inside me:
“Did I truly want to become a physiotherapist?”
The moment I noticed that question,
I could no longer avoid facing myself.
What does it mean to work?
What kind of person am I?
How do I want to live?
There was the struggle
of belonging to organizations and companies.
There was Pilates,
which I studied while searching for independence.
And eventually,
another realization appeared:
Even as a physiotherapist,
even as a Pilates instructor,
those things alone are not the whole of how I want to live.
Beyond those questions,
I’ve slowly begun to glimpse
a feeling of:
“This is how I want to live.”
Without even trying,
I constantly observe people’s bodies—
including my own.
I notice movement.
I analyze posture.
I sense imbalance.
It has become almost instinctive.
That’s why I can now say with certainty:
everything I learned through physiotherapy and Pilates
has become part of my flesh and blood.
I don’t regret that path at all.
If anything,
I’m grateful I walked it.
But physiotherapy and Pilates
are not my entire identity.
They are simply
important pieces
that helped me learn
how to live more fully as myself.
I want to live fully.
Together with this body.
This body is my companion.
In a world where people may live for a hundred years,
how do we use our bodies,
care for them,
and stay in conversation with them?
To notice the body’s feedback—
to truly receive it—
feels essential
to living as myself.
And in that sense,
having the perspective of both physiotherapy and Pilates
has become one of my greatest strengths.
I am always in conversation with myself.
Sometimes,
it feels as though
there is a very small version of me
living quietly inside my chest.
Behind a tiny door.
Small.
Sensitive.
Fragile.
But that little self
is also my source of energy.
And because she is fragile,
I have to care for her carefully.
I have to shape her environment,
nourish her,
maintain her.
Of course,
there are days when I can’t do it perfectly.
But maybe that’s okay too.
This diary itself feels like
one form of that conversation.
A way of living while gently tending
to my body,
my daily life,
and my heart—
so that I can continue
living as myself.
November 2025