Mighty Hok Chronicles
Winter 2026 | A report on life featuring recent news, reflections, and other odds and ends
Winter 2026 | A report on life featuring recent news, reflections, and other odds and ends
It's been over a year! Here’s a review from Aug 2024 - Feb 2026.
Tokyo is a big city! It has 23 special wards, 26 cities, 5 towns, 8 villages, and outlying islands. I lived in a special ward called Koto City on the East near Tokyo Bay. It is a historically working-class mixed industrial and residential area with fewer tourists compared to cities like Shibuya or Shinjuku (even though it’s actually quite central). There are a lot of small rivers that are nice to walk along with hidden garden pathways.
A visit from Rachel led us to Tsutaya Books in Daikanyama. Tsutaya is a bookstore chain with amazing interiors. This particular one consists of several interconnected buildings with a lounge in the middle. We spotted a group of older ladies socializing over drinks and imagined what it would be like to live that lifestyle one day.
I finally moved from a small studio apartment to a slightly larger 1LDK (1 bedroom, living, dining, kitchen) unit. It was less than 500sqft but felt spacious in comparison. Can’t complain given Tokyo’s small housing standards! The building is located on the man-made island Toyosu within Koto City, where the digital art museum teamLab Planets is located. It is managed by Park Axis which is a Mitsui development. Mitsui is one of the historical "Big Four" family-run business conglomerates in Japan so it kind of felt like they owned everything. Aside from moving, Esther visited and we ate ramen. Then Baskaran visited and we had monja (pan-fried batter similar to okonomiyaki). Renato finally arrived in Tokyo towards the middle of the month and we spent a couple weekends getting things for the home.
One of the best things to do in Japan is enjoy a bento on the Shinkansen (bullet train). There's something about eating while steadily moving towards a destination that feels satisfying. We took the train to Nagoya, which is only 1 hour 40 minutes from Tokyo Station. A lot of tourists tend to pass through Nagoya on the way to Osaka and Kyoto, but Nagoya has its own charm. One interesting experience was getting onto a packed train on a sleepy Sunday morning to see it completely packed with females all holding the same bag that said "King & Prince". It turns out that King & Prince is a Japanese idol group and we had caught them on a concert day. It was my first exposure to the power of Japanese fan culture. Later that month, I participated in a local 10k as part of the Koto Seaside Marathon. The route was close to where I worked. Towards the end of the month, my parents came to visit along with some of their friends who were celebrating their 70th birthday.
At the beginning of December, Renato and I travelled to Hong Kong with my parents. Aside from visiting my grandmother, we ate back to back meals with my extended family members. We didn't have time for sightseeing but met up with Jen who happened to be there as well. Back in Tokyo, things were getting festive. Even though the Japanese don't celebrate Christmas, there were a lot of decorations and lights on display. We went for a walk in Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, a beautiful park in the heart of Tokyo. At certain angles it has a Central Park feeling with lots of ponds, greenspace, picnickers, and a modern skyline in the backdrop. Since Christmas is not a holiday, it felt strange to go to work but I got the entire week off for New Years.
We spent New Years in Osaka. It was quiet because everything gets shut down for the holidays, so we had planned to hang out at the hotel. At some point, a traditional Japanese lion dance (Shishimai) came through the lounge. There was a green lion that danced from person to person to the music of a flutist. Later that month, Julia and Antoine (along with Chris and Slothy) stopped by during their ski trip and we had drinks at Ginza Lion Beer Hall. We also visited a listening bar called Bar Martha. The idea is to focus on listening to music and not talk too much. The sound system was fantastic and sounded live.
February felt like a low-key month before cherry blossom season. We went to Kyoto to take advantage of the off season and I visited an onsen for the first time. Growing up in Canada, the idea of a communal bathhouse experience felt uncomfortable at first but you quickly adapt to the norm. Something else I enjoyed in Kyoto was walking the Philosopher's Path. It is a path along a canal that takes about 30 minutes to walk. It is lined with cherry blossoms and gets very busy during tourist season, but it was quiet and peaceful when we were there.
I did not run the 2025 Tokyo marathon. Jon did though! He flew in from Toronto and stayed with us in preparation for the big race. Unfortunately, he got sick and spent the week trying to recover. On race day, he managed to regain some strength and ran a solid race. We watched towards the finish line. That’s him in the white sleeveless shirt with sunglasses.
April started off with a weekend trip to Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture before travelling to visit Renato’s family in Brazil. Things went downhill from there. The day before our flight, his dad suffered a hemorrhagic stroke. By the time we arrived, he was in the hospital on life support. We visited everyday. The ICU room had a lot of machines and only two family members could be in the room at one time (which was already an exception). I often sat in the waiting area looking at other people in the hospital who were also waiting and worried. I remember the morning when he passed because Renato’s mom received a call from the hospital early in the morning saying that we should go soon. It was a warning that things had taken a downturn. After waiting for some time outside, a lady took us to a small family room to deliver the news. It was a very sudden loss and a really difficult time. I only had the chance to meet my father-in-law a handful of times but he had always accepted me even though we couldn’t communicate. He would speak to me in Portuguese knowing that I didn't understand him and I'd smile back. We had taken this photo together and that was always the photo he kept on his phone background.
After briefly returning to Tokyo, Renato flew back to Brazil for a month to help his mom and brother with the procedures and paperwork for his father's death. I went back to work. There was a feeling of great uncertainty. One weekend, I had dinner with an aunt and uncle who were in town. Another weekend, Vanessa was in town and we travelled to the Izu Peninsula. We took the train south to Shimoda and Atami. It was a little chilly and also beautiful. At times the winds were so strong and the sky was so misty that the waves and sky started to blend into a grey gradient. A great time for surfing apparently as we saw surfers in the early morning catching waves.
June was a blur as the summer heat started to settle in. Tokyo weather is generally great except in the summer with the heat and humidity. That feeling of instant stickiness and sun in your face. For some reason I often felt like the sun hit lower in Tokyo, like it was shining right at you sideways. I finally understood the appeal of the sun umbrella. Sunny days means BBQ though and I was glad to join the annual work beach BBQ event. The venue was under this large open tent structure with outdoor lounge furniture. It was all meat and a few grilled veggies and beer.
We took a bus to Takayama in Gifu Prefecture. The city is famous for preserving Edo style buildings. It’s also known for sake and self-service sake tasting. You start by trading yen for special tokens. Inserting one token into a capsule vending machine gets you a plastic cup. The rest of your tokens can be spent trying out various sake. The more premium the sake, the more tokens you insert. Later in the month, Chuno visited Tokyo (with Jon and Izzy)! They came to Toyosu to check out the local neighbourhood. We started at Super Viva Home, a Japanese home store kind of like Home Depot but with a pet store inside. It’s fun to say in Japanese: スーパービバホーム — (SU PA BI BA HO MU). Izzy liked the puppies. We also went to the Small Worlds miniature museum and took photobooth photos with a filter that gave us anime eyes. That was fun.
I had randomly won a rock paper scissors competition (called Janken in Japanese じゃんけん) at work and got free tickets to the Osaka World Expo. I had always wanted to go to a world expo. It was on Yumeshima Island near Universal Studios. The architecture featured a massive wooden Grand Ring bordering the entire event space. It was cool because you could take an escalator up the ring and walk around it. It was an extremely hot day but the ring actually felt cooler with a bit of wind. In order to actually see any of the exhibits from different countries, you had to enter a lottery prior to visiting and get a reservation. The system was not intuitive but we ended up getting entries to the Netherlands and Australia exhibits. Both took about 10 minutes. We didn’t bother lining up for other exhibits.
I visited Hiroshima which was a humbling experience because of its history as the site of the first atomic bombing in 1945. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum doesn’t sugarcoat things, the artifacts and testimonials of survivors are horrific. It’s been 80 years now and yet there’s a sense of urgency in reminding people about the devastation of nuclear weapons because nuclear programs have been resurfacing around the world. During that trip, we also visited the Simose Art Museum in Ōtake. It is a beautiful small museum featuring colorful boxes that you walk between. The collection seemed to be an eclectic mix of things. There was an exhibit featuring insect motifs. Sadly, this was also the month I resigned from work because we decided to move back to Canada. It was really difficult to give my notice.
My last working day was on Oct 7th. To account for my holidays, my official last day (known as my retirement date) was Oct 17th. It’s customary for members of the team to take a photo at a robot cell so there we are huddled together. During my last month in Japan, we took another trip to Hong Kong to see my grandmother. She’s in her 90s now. We also got to catch up with Sandra this time. Back in Tokyo, we went to The Making of Harry Potter based on Mei’s recommendation. It had various sets (very realistic), props, and costumes from the movie series. I snacked on a Mandrake Chocolate Trifle cake that looked extremely realistic and was surprisingly tasty. Meanwhile, Renato did a lot of the heavy lifting with selling furniture.
After a brief one-week stop in Vancouver, we stayed at my parents’ condo in Toronto from November to mid-December. Renato started his new remote job. I started to prepare for job searching again. The weather was cold for November so we ended up Ubering quite a bit. We would go to the recreation center downstairs to play table tennis or run on the treadmill. Sometimes we’d tag along with my mom when she went to pick up my niece from daycare as well. It was nice to spend some time together.
In contrast to the cold of Toronto, we travelled to Brazil to visit Renato’s mom and brother. It was summer! There was a heat wave during the week leading to Christmas and New Years and we didn’t have air conditioning so it was a strange contrast to Canada. Luckily the weather cooled down slightly after that first week. We went to Limeira where Renato’s brother lives and stayed for a week at a cottage house with a pool. The house was mostly outdoors with rooms for sleeping. It rained almost everyday (grey clouds rolling in the photo) but there were many sunny moments as well and we’d often jump into the pool around 4:30pm when it was still bright but the UV had subsided.
We flew from Brazil to Toronto and had a quick breakfast bite with my parents at the airport before heading to Vancouver again. We found a short term rental for 3 months next to the Science World from a retired couple who went on an annual trip to Vancouver Island to visit their grandchildren. It worked out because they left for their trip right after we arrived and gave us the key. I started a puzzle and continued job searching and preparations.
We spent a lot of time looking for a new rental unit, then researching and visiting places to get furniture. Somehow the days trickled by. I ran a few times each week. We eventually found a place and I've been going back and forth receiving deliveries and getting ready to move. The weather warmed up and the days started to get longer.