Cedar, cicada, and us.

Greetings from the Shikoku region in Japan. We left Yakushima Island last week to explore different aspects of Japanese culture and spend quality family time together before heading back to our life in the canyon. Right now, I am sitting at a little nook in the corner of a 100-year-old machiya, tucked within the coastal town of Aki. Without air conditioning, it’s hot and humid. Still, the sun is slowly lowering its intensity, and a slow breeze is gently swinging a traditional Japanese windchime, hanging just outside the worn-in wooden-framed window. I recently read in a Japanese book that the particular sound of the chime is meant to lower the perception of the heat during the summer. I wonder if someone was sitting in this exact spot 100 years ago, looking through this wooden-framed window, and pondering questions and bouncing answers.

I went into this summer’s Japan trip with an openness I hadn’t felt in my previous visit, partially because I didn’t know how to prepare to travel with 12 and 15-year-old kids. From my experience, I knew that planning the activities based on what had worked in the past would backfire. So the only way to anticipate was to be ready to co-create the experience with Satchi, Coco, and Frido as we spent time together. Also, the inner journey I've undertaken over the last two years since my previous visit to Japan has given me a fundamentally different base from which to experience and sink into my lineage. I didn’t know where the thread was going to emerge. Still, I have felt ready to return to my home, both physically and spiritually, and I intuitively knew the process of “coming back to my body” would happen here in Japan, immersed in the sound of human and non-human words.

On this trip, we spent most of our time in Yakushima, a small island south of Japan, where my maternal grandfather spent his retirement days, which were then passed on to my dad a decade or so after my grandfather passed away. I vividly remember visiting my grandfather with my cousin when I was seven, going into the forest to meet the ancient tree, one of whom I have made a pilgrimage to every time since that very time. This particular tree is known to be over 1800 years old and wears the robe of majesticness effortlessly and gracefully. A week after we arrived on the island this time, we seized the welcoming non-rainy day (which was rare in July) to drive up the mountain to hike through the forest. My family knew it would take forever for me to walk through this forest, so the kids were already heading back to the car when I greeted the old friend once again. In the quietness of the forest, I stood on the base of the tree and reported that it had been 40 years since we first met. To me, 40 years is most of my lifetime…, but I realized that the same timeframe would probably feel like a blink of an eye for the tree that has seen many visitors come by in the last 1800 years.

You can’t describe Japanese summer without the background chorus of cicadas, ringing in the high-pitched voice with never-ending songs during the daytime. During my week-long visit to Kyoto for the BK retreat with our team members in July, we walked by a local playground where the unmistakable sound of cicadas bombarded our senses. The sound, combined with intense heat and humidity, felt unbearable. Still, when I felt the overwhelm take over my nervous system, I reminded myself that they could only sing their song for a few weeks at most, as they were nearing the end of their lifecycle in the summer. Knowing this fact made me lean into celebrating the cicadas’ beautiful lives instead of completely losing my nerves.

The life of a 1800-year-old cedar tree and a week-old cicada... Neither of them is more valuable than the other in this world, and our human life sits somewhere in between.

I am grateful that I am allowed to count decades in my life instead of days, and I also feel humbled that my time here on this earth would only feel like the blink of an eye to an ancient tree.

Our lives often feel limited and tied to the construct of perceived time, yet it’s eternally timeless.

-wakako

always a metamorphosis in progress...

Kochi, Japan // August 4th, 2025

P.S. For the last six weeks, I wrote a few postcards from various places we visited in Japan. If you were to send yourself a postcard this summer, what would the title of the postcard be? Shoot me an email if you have a simmering thought. (wakakotakagi@gmail.com)