Japan has a reputation for politeness. For many visitors, it’s one of the defining impressions — the order, the quiet, the sense that everyone is aware of everyone else. There’s an expectation that this politeness extends evenly, creating a kind of shared social warmth. And often, it does. But not always in the way people expect.

Friday 11th March 2011, a day that rocked an entire nation and sent shock waves around the world, both literally and figuratively. It is a day that will be remembered with sorrow and awe. It was a day that many knew would come, and despite nonchalance and bravado, everybody here feared it.

It was the Big One.

The image above was taken from one of the highest viewing points in Tokyo — about as close to a bird’s-eye view as you can get. A vast, sprawling metropolis ... Despite the density, crime is low, the streets are clean, and people mostly keep to themselves. The city is designed with convenience in mind: trains are frequent and almost always on time; convenience stores are open 24 hours a day and live up to their name… And then there is city hall. Even this is, for the most part, orderly and efficient …

There’s no point pretending otherwise: we’ve all noticed it. Not in headlines or government briefings, but on foot, on trains, and in the small frictions of daily life that only register when you’ve been here long enough to remember something different. For years, my wife and I had a ritual. Once a year, usually sometime in the first quarter, we’d escape to Kyoto for a week. … Kyoto back then felt expansive and unhurried. Even the famous places allowed space. It was calm in a way that felt almost deliberate. We could relax and disconnect. It was bliss.

When I arrived in Japan in 2003, I didn’t come looking for a new life. I came for the experience — a year, maybe two — without imagining the country would shift under my feet, or that I would shift with it. Back then, Japan felt firmly anchored in the analogue world. People clung to cash with white-knuckled conviction. Flip phones ruled the world, and were the envy of it. ATMs had operating hours — even shutting down entirely for four days over the New Year holiday. Daily life ran on habits that felt immovable, accepted without question.

It’s Christmas. I’ve always liked Christmas. Not just the day itself, but the stretch of time around it. As a musician in the UK, it was never something that began and ended on the 25th. There were concerts and carol services stretching from late November right up to Christmas Day itself. And it didn’t end there. Christmas Day was just the first of twelve. It was a period of time you lived inside, rather than passed through. Christmas Day was a marker, not a finale.

When I first arrived in Japan in 2003, I thought I had some idea of what I was stepping into. I’d travelled, I’d read the guidebooks, I’d watched the films. I assumed living abroad was simply “life, but different” — familiar enough, just with new scenery. What I didn’t understand was that Japan doesn’t just offer a different lifestyle. It offers an entirely different logic! And it took me years to realise how much of that logic I misunderstood at the start.

I couldn’t tell you the exact moment Japan became home.

Maybe it was when I upgraded my living quarters and moved into a high-rise condominium in Ikebukuro. Perhaps it was when Ayako and I got married… Whenever it happened, there was no ceremony, no milestone, no neat line between the life I thought was temporary and the one that had so very quietly become permanent.

I never planned to live in Japan. In fact, the idea barely crossed my mind beyond the films and books that coloured my teens with distant images of neon streets and quiet temples.

London was home, music was my entire world, and my future felt mapped out in rehearsals, concert halls, and late-night practice rooms. But life has a way of nudging you sideways.