Today was hard. Really hard. I had an appointment with a lawyer, and by the time it was over I felt psychologically exhausted. It has been an incredibly difficult period of my life, and today was one of those days when everything felt particularly heavy. And then, completely unexpectedly, something happened that changed the shape of the day. An email arrived from British Airways advertising discounted flights. Normally I probably would have looked at it for two seconds and deleted it, but for some reason I thought: Let me see if Japan is included. It was. And suddenly I was looking at flights to a place I have been trying to reach for fifteen years.

I have wanted to go to Japan since 2011. That year, Japan was supposed to be my honeymoon. Then Fukushima happened and I had to change the destination. Years later, in 2020, I tried again. I planned the trip, and then Covid happened and the world closed down. Last year I tried for a third time. I actually bought a ticket, only to discover that I had been scammed. At that point Japan had almost started to feel like this strange impossible destination in my life. A place I kept trying to reach and somehow never could.

And today, on one of the hardest days I have had in a while, I tried for the fourth time.

This time, I did it.

I bought the ticket. I’m going to Japan!

I don’t think I can properly explain how emotional that felt. Fifteen years have passed since the first time I imagined myself there. Fifteen years. So much has happened in that time that I almost can’t connect the person I was in 2011 with the person writing this now. My life changed. I changed. Things ended that I thought would last forever. Things happened that I could never have predicted. I lost people, found parts of myself, lost other parts, rebuilt things, changed direction countless times and became a completely different version of myself. And somehow, through all of that, Japan remained there. This little dream that never disappeared.

Maybe that is why buying the ticket today felt like more than booking a holiday. There was something strangely emotional about finally being able to say: I’m going. Not “one day”. Not “maybe next year”. Not another plan waiting to be cancelled. I have the ticket. After fifteen years, I am actually going to Tokyo.

Later, I went into an Asian food shop and wandered around buying a few things. When I reached the sweets, I saw the strawberry sandwiches with cream and the taro rolls. Normally I would have looked at them thinking about Japan as this place very far away that I wanted to visit someday. But today I looked at them and had this ridiculous little rush of emotion because I suddenly thought: I’m going to eat these in Japan.

And perhaps that tiny moment was when it became real.

I love that this happened today. Not because it erased everything difficult about the day. It didn’t. The difficult things are still there. But sometimes life does this strange thing where, in the middle of something incredibly heavy, a completely different door suddenly opens. This morning I was dealing with something I desperately wish had never become part of my life. A few hours later I was booking the journey I have dreamed about for fifteen years.

Both things happened on the same day.

And tonight, somehow, the thing I keep thinking about is this:

I’m going to Japan!!!