Almost Five Years Since We Left Japan

This June 28th will mark five years since we left Japan.

Five years.

Some days it feels like a lifetime ago.
Other days, it feels like we just stepped away for a moment.

Every now and then, my phone reminds me.

An old photo appears.
A video I didn’t even remember taking.

A walk through a familiar street.
A meal shared with friends.
A small, ordinary moment that once made up our everyday life.

Sometimes it’s not even my memories that resurface.

It’s my in-laws sending back photos we had shared with them while we were living there.

Moments we lived in real time, now returned to us as memories.

We often sit with our son, Zay, and look through these photos and videos together.

He was born in Japan.
It is his first home.

He remembers some things.
And some things, he doesn’t.

There are moments when he’ll look at a photo and say,
“I remember that.”

And others when he’s quiet, trying to piece together a memory that feels just out of reach.

Since moving to the U.S., we’ve talked many times about going back.

Not just to visit but to return, even if only for a short while.

We want to go while he is still a child.

So he can experience Japan not just through stories and pictures, but through his own eyes again. Through that same sense of wonder.

And now, with Christiana, it feels even more important.

We want her to experience Japan as a child too.

Partly, if I’m honest, so we can relive those early years we had with Zay.

But also so that, as a family of four, we can share something that shaped us so deeply.

I remember when I first moved to Japan on my own.

No one in my family had ever been there.

There were so many moments I tried to explain - stories, experiences, small cultural nuances - but it was hard for others to fully understand.

And then my sisters came to visit.

And everything changed.

Suddenly, the stories made sense.

They could walk the same streets.
Eat at the places I loved.
Meet the people who had become my community.

They could feel it for themselves.

And in that shared experience, something deeper formed between us.

A connection I can’t quite put into words.

That is what we want for our children.

When we left Japan, we were a family of three.

Now, we are four.

And we dream of going back, not just to revisit a place, but to reconnect with a part of our lives that still lives within us.

We talk about visiting Zay’s old schools.

Letting him show his little sister where he once played, learned, and grew.

Sitting with friends who knew him at the age she is now, remembering those early years together.

We want to bring our family back to a place that once held us so fully.

A place that shaped us, quietly and deeply.

A place we still call home.

And maybe that’s what returning is about.

Not just seeing a place again, but sharing it with the people you love, so it becomes part of their story too.