I wake up naturally around 5:30am. There’s no need to set an alarm, and there’s nothing I have to get ready for, but in the last few years I have taken a liking to going to sleep early and getting up early. Our bedroom (or “where we sleep”) is on the second floor of our house, and so we do not close the shutters up here at night. This means it gets very bright very early in the summer mornings, and it’s easy to wake up early for me.

My wife is still sleeping and will probably still be sleeping for at least a couple of hours. There is no reason for her to get up, and she always goes to bed a lot later than me.

We sleep on futon mattresses on the ground here. When we bought this big old house with tatami mat in every room, we decided we wanted to get rid of our bed and sleep on futons like people usually do when this live in big old houses in the countryside.

I wake up and go out onto the balcony from the sliding door from the room we sleep in. We have already lived here for a few months, but I never get old of looking at the Isumi River. It winds along in the southeast of Chiba Prefecture, and it always feels peaceful to look at it.

“We’ve actually done it. We’ve actually moved deep into the beautiful countryside,” is usually the thought going through my head when I look out. I remember once going for a job interview in Okinawa, and I was sure I would get the job. I had the same feeling one night in my hotel the day before my interview. “It’s actually happening, I will break free,” or something was the thought going through my head.

I look into our “yard”, and look at all the fruit trees my wife planted and her farms. I will probably go down and have a look for any ripe tomatoes that I can eat before I sit outside with a book. I think it is because I’m from Vancouver (or somewhere that’s not bloody hot at 5:30am in the summer) that regardless of the season, I want to have a hot cup of tea in the morning. I don’t mind sweating. I want to be properly dressed (a polo shirt perhaps), sitting on my chair outside with a hot cup of tea and a book.

For better or worse I’ve been rereading books exclusively over the last few years. We broke a huge comfort zone to get down here, but then with literature I am too scared or stubborn to break any new ground.