I never planned to go to Japan.
After spending two months in Bali, I was ready to fly home. Then, almost overnight, the airspace over several Middle Eastern countries closed following the conflict between the United States and Iran. My flight was cancelled, and suddenly getting back to Europe became far more complicated. The only realistic option was to travel north, which meant buying an entirely new ticket.
Instead of seeing it as a problem, I made a spontaneous decision. If I had to change my route anyway, I would spend two weeks in Japan before going home.
The timing, however, could hardly have been called ideal.
I arrived at the very beginning of spring with a suitcase packed for months of tropical weather. Japan was still cold. Within the first day, I realised that almost everything I had brought with me was completely useless. I needed a jacket, sweaters, proper shoes and warmer clothes—the exact things that were sitting peacefully at home waiting for me.
I basically had to buy everything I needed just to survive those two weeks. On the one hand, I already owned all of those things. I simply didn't have them with me. And somehow, that made me feel as though I owned nothing at all. Like a traveller whose luggage had been lost.
In last Friday's piece, I wrote about how the things we own do not define us. Japan made me realise that there is a difference between owning very little—very little that is familiar and truly yours, but still something—and having nothing familiar at all.
Looking back, what stayed with me wasn't the inconvenience itself. It was how unexpectedly uncomfortable it made me feel.
I've always loved fashion. As a designer, I've spent years building my wardrobe very intentionally. A wardrobe that feels entirely mine. My favourite leather jacket, the jeans I instinctively reach for, the loafers that somehow work with almost everything. Those pieces had become so familiar that I stopped noticing how much confidence they quietly gave me.
Suddenly, none of them were there.
For two weeks, I lived in practical sweaters, sensible Onitsuka Tiger shoes I bought there—which, at twenty thousand steps a day, quite literally saved my life, or at least my exhausted feet—and clothes chosen almost entirely out of necessity. I didn't want to go crazy buying pointless things either.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of that, but I couldn't help laughing at the irony. I had finally made it to Japan—a country I had always imagined visiting to discover beautifully crafted clothes and hidden fashion gems—and instead of searching for treasures, I found myself buying basic jeans, warm knitwear and everyday essentials simply because I had packed for thirty-degree weather and was never supposed to be there in the first place.
By the end of the trip, I had even bought a second suitcase. Not because I had found extraordinary pieces I couldn't leave behind, but because I had unintentionally built an entire temporary wardrobe I had never planned to own.
If I went back today, I would probably buy the Birkin of my dreams and proceed to drag it across airport floors until it was completely worn in, Jane Birkin style, much to the horror of those who consider such behaviour unworthy of the bag. It's only a bag, after all. I did think about it at the time, but with one suitcase already full of new clothes and an entirely unplanned two-week trip, I decided to leave it for the next visit.
But this piece isn't about that.
The whole situation felt almost absurd. And somewhere along the way, I realised that Japan was confronting me with something far more interesting than fashion.
It was confronting me with my own attachment.
Before that trip, I had never considered myself particularly attached to material things.
I've always appreciated beautiful objects, but I never believed they defined me. If someone had asked whether my confidence depended on my wardrobe, I would have answered without hesitation that it didn't. That none of it really mattered. You know who you are, after all. You know your worth.
Or at least you think you do.
Japan made me question that answer.
What I missed was familiarity. The ease of putting on clothes that had long ago become an extension of me, without having to think about them. It made me realise how quietly we build our identity around the things that accompany us every day. Not because we consciously decide to, but because familiarity slowly becomes part of who we believe we are.
Even when we own very little, we still have something that feels like ours.
But when the luggage disappears and nothing familiar remains, suddenly you are standing there naked.
Who are you when you stand naked?
At the same time, I found myself in a country whose philosophy seemed to ask the opposite question.
Japanese aesthetics have never fascinated me because they encourage owning less. They've fascinated me because they seem to understand something many of us spend our entire lives resisting: beauty doesn't need to be possessed in order to be experienced.
I arrived before cherry blossom season had reached its peak. A few trees had already begun to bloom, but the famous landscapes I had imagined would only appear after I had already left Japan. At first, I thought I had simply arrived at the wrong time.
Months later, I began to think that maybe I had arrived exactly when I was supposed to.
I went to Japan expecting to learn something about beauty.
Instead, I learned something about attachment.
Not only attachment to beautiful things, but to expectations, identities and the quiet belief that life should unfold according to the picture we have already created in our minds.
Maybe that was the real lesson.
Not everything beautiful is meant to be owned. Not everything beautiful is meant to stay.
Can you appreciate beauty without wanting to possess it?
Sometimes it is enough that, for a brief moment, we were fortunate enough to encounter it.
The more I reflected on that trip, the more I realised that attachment rarely begins with the objects themselves. It begins with the stories we attach to them.
A wardrobe is never just a wardrobe. And you know I'm not really talking about a wardrobe here, right?
A home is never just a home. Even a city eventually becomes more than a place on a map. Over time, our possessions, routines and surroundings quietly absorb pieces of our identity. They become evidence of the life we've built and the person we've become. Without noticing it, we stop asking whether we own these things or whether, in subtle ways, they have begun to own us.
Maybe that is why unexpected change feels so uncomfortable. It isn't simply because something familiar disappears. It is because we suddenly lose the external reference points that help us recognise ourselves. We mistake familiarity for identity, and when familiarity is removed, we temporarily lose our footing.
Japan challenged that assumption every single day.
I walked through Kyoto, Tokyo and small streets that felt completely unfamiliar, wearing clothes I had never planned to buy, carrying a suitcase I had never intended to own and following an itinerary I had never expected to take.
And strangely enough, after a few days, something shifted.
I stopped thinking about what I had left at home. I stopped comparing every outfit to the one I wished I had packed. The absence of familiar things slowly stopped feeling like a loss.
It made me wonder whether confidence is something we possess or something we constantly negotiate with our surroundings. We often believe confidence comes from within, yet many of us quietly borrow it from routines, places, possessions and circumstances that make us feel safe. We only notice how much we've handed over to the outside world when those things disappear.
Maybe confidence isn't tested when life goes according to plan.
Maybe it is tested when almost nothing does.
By the time the cherry blossoms reached full bloom, I was already back in Europe.
For a brief moment, I felt as though I had missed the most beautiful part of Japan. Like so many travellers before me, I had imagined that if I were lucky enough to visit during sakura season, I would see the country exactly as it appears in photographs. Instead, I arrived a little too early. There were blossoms here and there, quiet reminders that spring had begun, but not the sea of pink I had expected.
Months later, I began to wonder whether that disappointment had been part of the lesson too.
The Japanese have a beautiful concept called mono no aware. It is often translated as an awareness of impermanence, but to me it means something gentler than that. It is the quiet understanding that the beauty of life does not exist despite the fact that everything ends.
It exists because everything ends.
Cherry blossoms are not celebrated because they stay. They are celebrated because they don't.
Their beauty is inseparable from their fragility. If they bloomed all year round, people would eventually stop gathering beneath them. They would become part of the background, another tree we walk past without noticing. It is precisely because they disappear so quickly that they ask us to pay attention while they are here.
The more I thought about it, the more clearly I saw how different this is from the way many of us move through life. We don't simply experience beautiful moments. We immediately begin negotiating with them.
We want them to last longer. We hope people won't leave. We want to hold on to youth, success, love and everything that feels good in the moment. Instead of fully experiencing what is in front of us, we become preoccupied with preventing it from changing.
Maybe that is where suffering quietly begins. Not because beautiful things disappear, but because we expect them not to.
Looking back, I no longer feel that I missed cherry blossom season. I simply met it in a different way.
Japan didn't teach me to chase beauty. It taught me that beauty asks for something much more difficult. Not possession. Not permanence.
Only presence.
xx
L
