Changing countries, changing homes

I’ve been a worldwide nomad for a great part of my life. After finishing school, I decided to go on a world tour and I guess I just caught wanderlust and never (wanted to get) healed. So basically my entire adult life I’ve had the following philosophy: Changing countries, changing homes.

Of course, this means turning every place where you stay for any length of time into your home, albeit just temporarily. And I guess I never felt more like home away from home than in Japan, where I spent three years. I guess I’d known that, after a couple of busy years changing jobs and living for work instead of working for a living, I’d come to Japan to save myself.

I remember my first days exploring the spiritual and natural experience of Japan, visiting temples and rustic villages and finally moving into a small flat in the suburbs of Tokyo. With its mesmerizing blend of tradition and modernity, of spirituality and sakura on the one hand and high-tech and grand infrastructure on the other hand, Tokyo was the welcoming melting pot I needed to rediscover my identity and to rebuild the missing pieces in my life.

A simple job and a small entourage of new, amazing friends soon followed. And then I lived a simple life for the 34 glorious months that followed. Japan will always be chick evenings sipping tea while watching the rush of neon lights and the smell of cherry blossoms. Eventually, I had to return home.

Moving back to Europe turned out to be a bit of a psychological turmoil. I knew home was home, but like I said, I’d managed to turn my small flat in Tokyo into my home. Of course, there was the practical side of things as well: a home is made up of an amazing amount of things that I had to ship back with me: books, clothes, even furniture. But this was the easy part of things – I must admit, I had help from a company that deals with these things. So in the end, with cherry blossom in my heart, moving to Japan back home started to feel like a normal process.