Japan Travels, Part 1: Gathering Thoughts and Threads
I’m preparing for my fourth trip to Japan, and this time, the process feels quieter, steadier. The anticipation isn’t a rush. It’s a hum. I’ve done this before, yet each time feels like it’s new in many ways.
Paper lanterns and cherry blossom buds on the Meguro River in Japan, March 2017
When I first traveled to Japan in 2017, my partner and I stayed mostly within Tokyo. We were based near the Meguro River, and that route (the still water, the paper lanterns hanging by the river, the still-firm buds holding onto winter) is still burned into my mind. In that trip, we used a low-tech pocket wifi, so most of our travel was planned from inside the Airbnb BEFORE the day got started. We were also with other locals then, and they were people who knew how to get from point A to point B. All I had to do was follow their plan, and I could simply absorb everything around me. It was my first long-haul, across-either-pond trip, and I was wowed at every turn. When I left, I remember thinking, I hope I’ll be back someday.
Katie on the last day of Japan travel, March 2017
Then life (moving and a whole-home renovation) and COVID (which really closed Japan’s borders) put everything travel-related on pause. And that was okay. We were safe, able to shelter-in-place, able to shift most of our work to online, and we had access to vaccines and medical care. In Oregon, we spent two years being very mindful of COVID, but at the end of 2022, we started to feel hopeful that we would be able to travel again soon. COVID had receded enough that we could think expansively and dream again about travel beyond the United States. Japan kept surfacing in every conversation, as if the idea itself had been waiting patiently. In November of 2022, we had seen that Japan would be opening their borders again to tourists, and Spring 2023 would be the first “non-COVID” Hanami since 2019. We jumped at the opportunity, and we were there for the last two weeks of March in 2023. Everything felt both tender and electric. We took day trips, wandered through small streets, lost a train ticket in Hiroshima, and still managed to laugh about it. I was constantly in awe: of precision, of kindness, of how order and warmth coexist so naturally there.
We returned again in March 2025, this time venturing farther afield, layering new memories onto the old ones. The pattern of travel (arrival, exploration, and the inevitable return) started to feel like a kind of stitching. Each trip added a new line of thread, looping through time and place, connecting who I was then to who I am now.
Now, as I prepare for this fourth visit, I’m gathering more than fabric and thread. While gathering memories of those past journeys, I’m also gathering intention: to travel more slowly, to notice more deeply, and to see what happens when some familiarity allows space for nuance.
Soon, I’ll be sharing more about this trip. It begins with an independent journey, and later, the sashiko retreat that anchors it. But for now, I’m still in this in-between space, the moment before departure, when everything feels possible. It’s the same feeling I get before beginning a new piece — the quiet pause before the first stitch, when all the threads are loose but full of promise.