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