It is zero degrees Celsius outside, and the toshikoshi soba broth is simmering on the hob. The word toshikoshi has always felt to me like a more nuanced expression of the new year than the abrupt division of the clock’s shift from 23:59 to 00:00. Its first character, toshi (年), means year, while koshi, the masu stem of the verb kosu (越す), means to cross a threshold, as one might traverse a mountain pass. Together, the compound describes the act of transitioning from one year into the next.
As for soba noodles, these are traditionally eaten on New Year’s Eve. Their meaning lies in both their physical qualities and historic uses. Firstly, soba breaks effortlessly, suggesting we cut away the year’s accumulated troubles rather than carry them forward. The noodles’ length then becomes a wish for longevity and good health. Furthermore, buckwheat’s ability to endure harsh conditions lends the dish a sense of resilience. Finally, buckwheat flour, having once been used by goldsmiths to gather fine particles of gold, adds a layer of financial prosperity.
Toshikoshi soba makes no grand promise—only a set of intentions, taken in through warmth, texture, and repetition at the year’s end. It brings me to a set of reflections on the year gone by, which I am sharing tonight through unlocked articles from the Tokyothèque archive: one for each month of 2025, alongside what I learned from each and how I intend to take that forward across the 2026 threshold. I hope they offer something useful for your own reflections, or, at the very least, some New Year’s Day reading. Let’s begin.
January | Bittersweet Japan
The year began with an inquiry into why so many visitors, after spending time in Japan and returning home, come to miss the country so intensely. One year on, the essay’s core ideas still ring true, like the piyo piyo of Tokyo’s crosswalks. Many will have first read it with 2025 travel plans beginning to form, or with a 2024 trip still settling into memory, or perhaps both. I suspect that remains the case. Those of you I had the fortune to meet or work with this year taught me that this to and fro between Japan and home is something we all share. In some ways it remains a solitary pursuit, but not one I feel alone in as I begin to draft plans for the year to come.
February | Kyoto Residency
In February, we stepped away from Tokyo to visit artist Anja Giese during her residency at Bridge Studio in Kyoto. In the grip of a bitter winter, I found Anja inside the project’s 100-year-old building, fan heaters humming, continuing her work despite the cold. It was the first newsletter edition to look outward, towards the wider community forming around Tokyothèque. Through a series of similar meetings over the year, I came away with a sense of potential for a meaningful project between like-minded people—and that 2026 might be the year we begin to give it form.
March | Tokyo Style
In March, I wrote about Tokyo Style, a book that deeply influenced my interest in the city. It is evident between the lines that its author, Kyoichi Tsuzuki, has long been something of a hero to me. The piece eventually led to an introduction to Tsuzuki-san, and earlier this month we met for a conversation. That possibility was far from mind when I wrote the piece, but you never know what the network effect might set in motion. I initially hesitated to publish the piece, unsure whether a book review belonged within Tokyothèque’s remit. Further doubts followed post-publication: the piece drew little immediate response. The unexpected outcome, however, arrived nine months later.
The lessons: if something takes your interest, it is worth making work around it, despite uncertainty. And while slow results can feel like failure in a throwaway social media environment, patience is often what allows the most meaningful results to surface.
April | Daikanyama Sightlines
From April’s writings, I have chosen to highlight this walk through Daikanyama as an early example of the neighbourhood guide format that has become central to Tokyothèque. These pieces draw us out of theoretical mode and into the physicality of the city, experienced at walking pace, one step at a time. This piece in particular prompted incisive reader feedback on the format’s practical value, which went on to inform the next iteration of Tokyothèque guides and, later, the project’s first guidebook. Perhaps the lesson is that one of the most reliable measures of a work’s success lies in the degree to which it informs the subsequent work.
May | Rolling Up Your Sleeves
In May, I found myself at a crossroads, with several personal and professional demands intensifying at once. The period felt like a distilled expression of modern life, with my attention pulled in multiple directions at the same time. In response, I turned to the kitchen, and to a set of Zen teachings I return to often. They helped me navigate a familiar tension: being slow by nature in a fast world, while still holding ambitions to make and do as much as I can. I am resurfacing this article now because its approach to grounding and clarity may be useful to some of you as 2026 begins; I suspect it will be for me.
June | The Chūō Line
One of May’s significant changes was leaving my long-held job to work on Tokyothèque full time. With those obligations settled, my first act in June was to head to the far reaches of western Tokyo to make a clean break, and to launch Field Notes, a periodic, paid travelogue-style newsletter. Its inaugural edition followed a week-long walk of the Chūō Line from end to end, totalling 222,524 steps, 142 kilometres, and 53 stations over seven days. It remains, by some margin, the longest urban walk I have undertaken, and came to resemble a kind of silent retreat. Of everything the walk offered, I was left above all with a familiar Confucian lesson: however far you travel, however long you walk—no matter where you go—there you are.
July | The Gyūdon Chain
July’s unlock is a Monograph edition. Over the summer, Monographs launched as a series of paid, monthly long reads. This marked further evolution from Tokyothèque’s beginnings as a free newsletter written in the early hours between sunrise and the working day, and towards something more durable: a platform able to support a wider range of cultural writing and creative work on Tokyo and Japan. That period of growth continues, and it has not been without difficulty—December’s Monograph is still forthcoming, an illustration of the learning curve involved in carrying several projects at once. Looking ahead to 2026, the aim is greater consistency with the same level of care and depth.
August | Travel Loops
This brief thinkpiece from August unexpectedly became one of our most read articles this year. If I had to account for its reach, it is likely because it touches on an unspoken difficulty that underlies travel for many people, yet receives little attention within travel and tourism media. Coverage in this space, whether user-generated content or professional journalism, tends to focus almost exclusively on the positives. But if you have ever felt a sense of unease around travel plans, determined as you are to go, this edition may offer some insight, and a way of approaching that feeling.
September | First Light
September brought another Tokyo sojourn and a follow-up edition of Field Notes. Rather than undertaking another long-distance walk, I turned to the above mentioned idea of travel loops, designing a week of movement focused on a single area of the city. We stayed within the bounds of Tokyo’s shitamachi, or ‘low city’, and attempted to establish daily habits reminiscent of Hirayama, the central character in Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, including visits to the locations used for his on-screen life. But as the film makes clear, not every day can be a perfect one. Since then, routine has not always come easily for me either, yet the principles of early rising and an earnest work ethic explored in the First Light series remain a point of reference I intend to carry into the new year.
October | Neighbourhood Tokyo
October marked the announcement of Tokyothèque’s first printed book, Tokyothèque Neighbourhoods, a volume-by-volume neighbourhood travel guide. As the year closes, all pre-orders have been fulfilled and are beginning to reach readers. Produced within a concise timeframe, the book taught me a great deal about the realities of making and delivering a physical object. It is difficult to reduce that experience to a single takeaway, but one stands out: projects of this scale are better when shared. This feels less like a conclusion than a starting point, and I am looking ahead to building a team supported by the printed side of Tokyothèque as it develops.
November | Print Club Girls
Earlier in the year, writer Tabitha Carver became Tokyothèque’s first guest contributor, and returned in November with a Monograph exploring the aesthetic world of purikura photobooths. In it, she traced a network of third spaces across Tokyo where young women experiment with self-expression. Having spent her formative teenage years in the city, Tabitha brought an insight no amount of desk research could replicate. Over the course of the year, I have met several writers with distinct perspectives on Tokyo and clearly defined areas of focus, and in the year ahead, more of these voices will find room here. At a moment when AI-generated writing proposes to flatten expertise and experience alike, Tokyothèque will continue to prioritise human insight and writing where each word is hard-won.
December | Tokyo Rhythm
The year closed with another first for the newsletter. I conducted an interview not with a fellow creator or observer of the city, but with someone whose working life has been embedded within Tokyo itself, contributing to its culture and fabric from the inside. A single afternoon with Mr Kobayashi yielded a depth of analogue knowledge—lived experience, historical context, and personal wisdom—that might take years of reading to internalise. It reinforced a long-held desire of mine to galvanise secondary sources with primary research and face-to-face encounters. Looking ahead, it will be essential to have more conversations with the very people who make Tokyo the inimitable city it is, as we seek to engage with it's creativity and essence.
With that, my friends, I am off to take a bowl of soba, tidy my home, and rest my bones before the year turns again.
Thank you for being here, week in, week out.
Until we meet in Tokyo,
AJ