At first I almost wrote “while I was traveling in the UK for a month”, but then I realised this had not been a tourist trip, not even a journey. For more than a month since end of July to the end of August this year I lived in the UK, mostly in London, exploring it every day, meeting friends and new people, going to pubs, churches, museums, parks, castles, bookshops, cafes, galleries, concerts, and just breathing it all in.

I learned that for certain important locations on this planet we need to grow to their level, to spend time learning about them and about ourselves, to live through historic moments, to read some books after all too–and only then we would be able to truly appreciate what we would be witnessing. You walk through the streets that are older than two thousand years but you only need a lifetime to understand what it means. Sometimes now I think I should have lived in London for my previous 25 years, but then perhaps I have now lived through these 25 years in London this last month. “Infinity in a grain of salt and Eternity in an hour”.

And then of course, how much you learn about a place familiar to you after you return from a long absence. What do the streets of Tokyo mean, truly, when we try to look deep into the history past the flames of March and April of 1945 and the collapse of 1923? What do the shape of the mountains, Mt Fuji, Hakone, Tamagawa, Yatsugatake, tell us of the landscape and the people who populated it?

These last three photos are from the walk in Winchester that inspired John Keats to write one of his most famous poems “To Autumn”. I was walking there thinking about the autumn where we will be heading now after the last few days of August. Enjoying the first cool breeze, turning the wheel of the year to the season that will “fill all fruit with ripeness to the core”. The season that will bring out the colours and begin our annual hunt for red leaves. Will I see something new in them this year and will I be able to pass it on to people I guide here in Japan?