It’s safe to say that this year won’t be an ordinary Christmas. This time of the year has always been all about family and yet I find myself without them on the other side of the world. I’m not one for home sickness but it still feels strange all the same. Christmas in Japan is also very different, it’s a fully commercial holiday without any of the deeper religious meaning and there’s not a great deal of turkey either. But I’ll leave it until a blog in the new year to talk more in depth about how the most wonderful time of the year is different in Japan.

Fundamentally I am in a very different place in more ways than one. I am now three months into my life in Japan, the first time I’ve lived overseas and therefore the longest time I’ve spent abroad. In some ways it’s lived up to and succeeded my expectations and in other ways it hasn’t. There’s always plenty of surprises in a situation like this. But although it’s only been a quarter of a year it feels a lot longer. It seems slightly surreal that I spent nine months of 2024 in the UK as so much has happened since then.

I’m certainly enjoying Japan and getting the experience of being somewhere new, something that for a long time I thought was no longer within my reach. Progress with working as a freelance photographer here has been slow but that’s to be expected given my limited connections when I first landed. But I am sure that will change as 2025 rolls on. Where will I be next Christmas? I honestly have no idea and that’s fine. There’s plenty more adventures ahead and sometimes it’s best just to enjoy what’s in front of you.

Merry Christmas.