I’ve always liked trains. Not Sheldon Cooper level though.
It might have started in Japan in 2007, during a four-month work trip. I was amazed at how everything moved so smoothly and fast. Trains arriving on time, people getting on and off, everyone trying to get somewhere and the train just takes them there.
On my trip to Japan this January, it felt different. Maybe because I was visiting someone who will no longer be able to read this book.
At that trip, I finally got to ride a sleeper train. It left Tokyo at 9:50 PM. By 11, they turned off all announcements until before we reach Okayama at 6 of the next morning. It was quiet. You just had to know where you were going and trust your alarm to wake you up.
From Okayama to Izumo, there wasn’t much to do but lounge and enjoy the views from the window. I watched everything pass by, platforms, houses, then snow-covered fields and trees, rivers and the grand Lake Shinji. I had this small space to myself, and everything outside kept moving.
Somewhere there, I had a simple thought: What if the train just kept going? No fixed stops. No set time. It only stops when you’re ready to get off.
That became the first book.
Having just read Tsujimura Mizuki’s How to Hold Someone in Your Heart. It made me want to write more simply, say less, but mean more. Japanese style. Minimalist. So I tried that here. I stopped myself from over-explaining. I just let the story be.
Seeing my name on a book cover was a dream I didn’t know can be realized. I think my 13-year-old self would be rejoicing.
There is a train that arrives without a schedule.
It pulls into the station at a certain time, on a certain day – a carriage of faded red fabric and the scent of dust and metal, visible only to those who need the ride.
The doors open.
The Conductor waits.
There are no tickets, only a journey through a city that feels like memory and a landscape that drifts like a dream.
The tracks do not end, and the train does not stop – not until you find the resolve to press the button.
If you found yourself in a carriage that shouldn’t exist, would you have the strength to stop?
And if you stepped off at six in the morning… would you still be the same person who boarded?
Available in Amazon (Paperback and Kindle)
SHORTS
The Lighthouse
Sometimes the hardest path isn’t the one through the forest. It’s the one back to yourself.
About Me
I started writing short stories for my classmates back in my sophomore year of high school. I enjoyed essays too, though never the long, winding kind, I was always more drawn to what could be said with less.
For a time, I thought I would become a journalist. But somewhere along the way, I fell in love with a computer, and life moved in a different direction. Still, the desire to write never really left. It stayed quietly, waiting.
It has always been a dream of mine to publish a book. After reading How to Hold Someone in Your Heart by Mizuki Tsujimura, I found myself drawn to a different way of writing, one that does not overexplain, but simply lets emotion exist as it is.
I don’t know if I will write another book. But even if I don’t, I think I’m already fulfilled.
