I arrived home from Tokyo four weeks ago, running lean and inescapably jet-lagged. The route back through Frankfurt was uncomplicated but long, ending in a Saturday night arrival at London Heathrow. I came back with photographs, research, and maps assembled into a working draft of the pilot volume of Tokyothèque Neighbourhoods, a tentative step into travel-guide publishing. The trip had worn me down to a clean edge, yet the task now was to edit and design the material into something readable and usable.

To achieve this, I’d been counting on a period of quiet, uninterrupted focus. But that Monday morning a new obstacle appeared: a property under construction beside my office. At 8 a.m. the soundscape of development started—hammering, drilling, and grinding.

In Zen meditation classes, when construction interrupts from outside the studio, leaders often use it as a lesson. The approach is to meet the sound directly until it loses its oppositional quality. Sitters are asked to release resistance, notice the tonal qualities of drilling or hammering, and let the noise be “just sound”. My hearing is particularly sensitive, though, and I have never managed to reach this state with intrusive noise.