Have you ever visited somewhere in the world that immediately felt like home? A place where everything should feel foreign, yet somehow doesn’t. Where each small experience is a first, and still there’s an ease to it, a quiet certainty that you’re exactly where you’re meant to be.

For me, that place was Japan.

I’ve always been drawn to travel, even if it hasn’t always been possible as often as I would have liked. That part of the world had long lived in my mind as something distant and almost unreal, the kind of place you imagine experiencing just once, if you’re lucky.

So when the opportunity finally came, I wanted to arrive open to it. I prepared in the practical ways: learning routes, landmarks, places to eat, the things you think will help you understand a place before you get there. And in some ways, that preparation helped.

What it couldn’t prepare me for was the feeling itself. The quiet pull of a country that didn’t just impress or inspire, but settled into me, unexpectedly and completely.

Each day brought something new. In just ten days, I walked over eighty miles through Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. I ate muscat grape ice cream among the lavender at the base of Mount Fuji, wandered through the towering stillness of the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, and drank cherry blossom sake beneath the glow of Dōtonbori’s night market.

These moments stayed with me not because they were extraordinary, but because of how quietly they settled. Nothing felt rushed or overwhelming. Even in the unfamiliar, there was a sense of calm, as though the world had slowed just enough to be properly noticed.

I have never felt entirely settled in England, despite it being the only place I have ever known. It is where I was born, and where generations of my family have lived, yet I have always experienced the world a little more intensely, and from slightly behind the scenes. I am observant rather than loud, reflective rather than expressive, more comfortable in the spaces between words than at the centre of attention.

In Japan, that way of being felt understood. The people I met were quiet without being distant, reserved without being unkind. Conversations unfolded gently, even when carried out in broken Japanese, and there was no pressure to fill every silence.

In each city, I felt a sense of recognition, as though I was seeing parts of myself reflected back in the rhythm of everyday life. For the first time, belonging didn’t feel like something I had to earn or perform. It was simply there.

For now, I don’t know when I’ll return to Japan. Perhaps I never will. That uncertainty carries a quiet weight, because some places don’t simply pass through your life. They linger long after you’ve left.

Japan holds that place in my heart. A place I would return to in an instant, if life allowed it. Maybe one day it will. Maybe it won’t. I don’t yet know where my journey will lead, only that some part of me remains there, woven into memories of streets, conversations, and moments that felt unexpectedly true.

And perhaps that’s enough for now. To have known a place that felt so deeply right, even briefly, is its own kind of belonging.