Fairly often, I find myself hovering between the present and the future - between trying to stay ambedo, a sense of being fully in the moment, and constantly thinking about what comes next. The future, in this sense, stretches anywhere from half a year to ten or even twenty years ahead. My mind moves back and forth between these two states more than I’d like.
This was my first New Year’s holiday in Japan since 2022. It made me more aware of how everyday practices are slowly changing. One notable example was nengajō, New Year’s cards. For my parents’ generation and above, sending physical cards by mail was a yearly ritual. For my generation, however, New Year’s greetings are more likely to come as a text message or an Instagram story. The meaning of wishing someone well remains, but the way it is expressed has clearly shifted. I noticed a similar change during our family gathering. When some relatives couldn’t travel to my grandparents’ house, they joined us through a video call, mirrored onto the TV. This has become common. In fact, I’ve done this every year since 2022. It no longer felt special, and yet I kept thinking about how unimaginable this would have been not so long ago.
Another moment stayed with me more quietly. While sitting with my grandma, aunts, and cousins, I was knitting a bonnet. I was following a pattern from a South Korean YouTuber, with English subtitles turned on. They were surprised; they had only ever used knitting patterns from books or magazines. My grandma said casually, “I could never have imagined things like this existed.” She rarely uses smartphones or laptops, and hearing that from her made me realise that the way we do things is neither fixed nor permanent. There is continuity from the past, but change is often unexpected and inevitable.
Being in the final year of my bachelor’s, I’m constantly asked what I’m going to do next, and uncertainty makes me anxious. I try to plan, predict, and prepare for everything. But remembering that even my grandma, someone I’ve always seen as confident and capable, couldn’t imagine the future she would live in brings me comfort. I even see beauty in knowing that we cannot know everything.
Yuki Nakamura, third year bachelor student Arts and Culture