We flew to Okinawa over the new year to escape the (admittedly mild) winter here in Tokyo for a few days. The weather held up to its reputation (we even swam in the ocean!), the beaches were beautiful and the food tasty. Now back in Tokyo, it’s time for me to put up a few pictures of the trip and look back at the first three months of my blogging here.

American military plane in landing approach

The few readers of this blog will have noticed an increasingly architectural bent this site has taken over the past weeks. I have been strolling through Tokyo looking for iconic buildings from the time spanning the three decades after WWII. It has been a fantastic way of better understanding the city and its history.

Now I want to bring these buildings “back” to life and explore the context they were built in. This will be one of the projects occupying my daily life over the next months. More details will be presented here in due course, but for now the back archive of architectural posts already features some of the buildings:

Hotel Okura, Kasumigaseki Building, NOA Building, Reiyukai Temple, Jyo-Senji Temple, The Tower House, Nagakin Capsule Tower, Hillside Terrace and New Sky Building No. 3. Without doubt, others will be added to the list shortly as my walks through this great city continue.

Ocean near Yomitan

This blog wasn’t only meant to cover my growing interest in urban architecture though. I have also reminisced quite a bit, which I think is a very important aspect of a “sabbatical”: Cyber Chaikhana, a fun book project I was involved in, interesting business trips around the world as well as a look at some publishing initiatives were all featured.

With all these posts, I have tried to refine my personal writing style. Rather than simply enumerating all the “great” things I have been involved in, I want to focus on their essence and my personal connection to them, i.e. to become more introspective. By that, I hope, I can understand better what it is that I seek in my professional future.

Naminoue Beach in downtown Naha (looks better from here)

Looking ahead into 2013, I look forward to a few more months to be spent in Tokyo, especially as a few good friends will come and visit. More travel lies ahead, to India for a family get-together, (hopefully) to Burma for some exploring and back to Europe / the States for longer-term dwelling.

Three months have passed since I set up this blog but already I can sense that it was a good idea. Perhaps it is best encapsulated in this post a good friend of mine alerted me to:

That’s the promise: you will live more curiously if you write. You will become a scientist, if not of the natural world than of whatever world you care about. More of that world will pop alive. You will see more when you look at it.

Happy New Year to everyone!