Hi friend,

I hope you’re doing well.

It’s me, Tomomi, sheepishly slipping what’s become a once-a-year note into your inbox. Writing has always been a labor of love for me, but publishing online feels harder and harder these days. I’ve let that heaviness seep into Postcards for too long. It gives me such pleasure to send these, and it’s time to take that back.

I hope you’ll continue to receive them, as moments of connection and invitations to wonder, with and without me.

Hi friend,

I’m sitting on a bench on Canal St Martin, enjoying the soft breeze and the yellow shadows cast by flickering streetlights. Someone is blasting Celion Dion and a duck is swimming closer to it, honking loudly. In protest or to partake… who knows? I am in good spirits, having succeeded in staving off what could have been a nasty cold.

After sending you many sentences about my love for personal libraries and working from home, I thought I’d share some work news today.

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Hi friend,

I’m on a long-distance train from Paris to Barcelona. We’ve just pulled back into Perpignan to change tracks, to get around a technical issue. I have no idea when we’ll arrive — a liminal space, when combined with a thermos of hot tea and all my devices charged, typically puts me in the mood to write a Postcard.

This is a Postcard about personal libraries.

One of the things I enjoy most about working from home is access to my library.

Hi friend,

Happy new year. It’s the first weekend of 2024 and I’m glad to re-connect with you. How are you starting the year?

I cherish this season for its invitation to close loops and open new ones, with an abundance of rest and play throughout. This year’s had a double billing: I soaked in Vienna in full Christmas splendor, then headed down to Brazil. I greeted the new year in the Amazons, munching on banana chips and swatting at mosquitos.

There's been a lot of splashing and floating in bodies of water, too — oceans, rivers, lakes and waterfalls. Clear, warm water, teeming with life.

Hello friend,

I’m listening to the wild twists and turns of the furin (lit. wind bell) hanging on our balcony as Typhoon No 7 passes over Japan’s main island. It’s the sound of summers past, with a chorus of cicadas in the background. (Usually a gentle twinkling sound, though!)

I’m back from some morning cycling, having tried my luck with the weather. The hourly forecast has been accurate this week — it just changes very quickly — and there was to be a 3hr window between rainfalls. On a clear day, this area offers panoramic views of the Southern Japanese Alps and Mt Fuji. Today, I was glad to be out testing the roads with our brand new eBike and to come home dry. There was 500m of elevation but this is a snap with an electric assist. A 20km loop calls for the exertion level of a morning stroll... which will be a different story once I figure out how to get a road bike up here!

This was a step towards re-writing my mental map of the area, to get a sense of geography beyond fuzzy impressions from the back of a car. I'm hoping to get in three more rides this week. Clearer skies ahead.

Hi friend,

I hope you’re doing well.

I’m writing to you from Ipoh, a former mining town a few hours north of Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia has glorious limestone caves and in this area, many of them have been turned into Buddhist or Taoist cave temples by generations of enterprising Hakka families. Inside, there are statues of enlightened figures and wall paintings, strategically lit up. Countless bats swoop in and out while cats and dogs silently pad about. The monkeys stay outside, chit chatting on the trees. Visiting humans wander around and you get the feeling that no one really knows what they’re looking at but we are pleased to be here, just the same. What extraordinary places to worship in.

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Hi friend,

A second postcard in the same month! No more recipes though, that was a rare find.

I hope you're doing well, and maybe even starting to make plans for the summer holidays. (Or winter holidays, if you're in the Southern hemisphere.)

I’m cycling in the Galicia region, far west of Spain on the Atlantic side. It’s woodsy, with abundant seafood and decent road conditions. It drizzles now and then, just enough to keep the temperature cool. I’m piggybacking on the infrastructure of the Camino de Santiago while following a route that I created myself.

Hi friend,

What kind of week are you having?

I'm home in Paris, where the pitter patter of rain has let up. It's probably time for spring cleaning, to help usher in some sunnier days.

Hello friend,

I’m on a plane waiting to leave Budapest, sitting in the lethargy of yet another sliver of time that will melt into the cracks opened by union strikes, technical issues and black box logistics. We’ll be on the runway for an hour — reasons unclear — and I suppose I’ll make it home by late afternoon.

Budapest was four intense days of Art of Hosting training and subsequent gatherings with friends, new and old.

AoH is about participatory leadership and complex facilitation, and a bewitching mycelium of a community of practice. I encountered it alongside other practices like Liberating Structures and LEGO Serious Play about seven years ago, when I started to do more innovation and org transformation work. In the years since, I’ve picked up many AoH practices through osmosis, via different collaborators. But it was high time for a deliberate and concentrated learning experience, and that’s what I was greeted with, and more. What a pleasure it is to be in the presence of deep mastery. To be welcomed as part of their own journies, and then set loose, trusting that we shall meet again down the trail.

Hi friend,

It’s been a while since I’ve managed to reach out — how are you?

I’m home in Paris, and have been since late January, quietly puttering around my apartment. Recently I’ve been taking long walks to shake off the day, dodging piles of trash and the aftermath of the protests.

The last two months have been a lot of resting, cleaning and nourishing myself. Typically, a few weeks in this mode would bring spikes of restlessness and dread. But in enjoying the stillness of home, I realized that I’ve been taking the space needed to be present for my learning arc on trauma-informed collaboration. Space to gently cup discomfort in both hands, and not look away. It's been a good winter.

Hello friend,

I’m at a hair salon in Tokyo, where my stylist is giving me instructions on how to blow dry my hair. He’s not a fan of how I’ve been doing it, and gently repeats himself, twice.

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I arrived last night, catching the red eye out of Charles de Gaulle. With Japan’s border entry protocols lifted after a long two years, flights are full.

Hi friend,

I hope you’re staying cool in the summer heat.

I’m at the AQ house at the foothills of the Yatsugatake Mountains, which has become quite house-like with the addition of a kitchen, Internet and hot water. Yay!

I wanted to tell you about my visit to a nearby shrine for a night of Noh, one of Japan’s traditional forms of theater.

Hello friend,

I’m at Kawaguchi-ko, one of the lakes which formed and re-formed as Mount Fuji erupted every couple thousand years since 2 million years ago. The Fuji Five Lakes as we known them today have been in place since year 864. The area is a popular getaway spot, thanks to its views and proximity to Tokyo. I'm here with my family for the weekend.

About an hour’s drive inland is AQ’s new house in the mountains. (AQ is an independent ten-person design studio in Tokyo and Paris. I’ve been with the company since 2009, and a partner since 2014.)

Here are my notes from a June 2021 workshop that I ran to start a conversation about evolving our Tokyo office. I'd gone into it with a vague idea of modular project rooms or a clubhouse-like space to share with our network.

Hello friend,

I’m sitting quietly at home, just back from a 60km bike ride up to Chantilly. It has not been a good couple of days for Japan. I’ve been feeling unsettled, and needed to switch gears from thinking about social isolation, disconnectedness and violence.

Before all that, what had been on my mind was the undetermined period of time that I think of as “after the workshop”. I think I have enough capacity to write about that, now, before turning in for the night.

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Hello friend,

I’m on a highway bus from Budapest to Zagreb, crammed with sweaty passengers. Croatia is slated to become part of the Schengen Area but for now, a stern-faced immigration officer has come onboard and taken all our passports. The air in the bus shifts between tension and boredom. I'm not sure what happens if someone is turned away. An expensive taxi ride or hitchhike back to Budapest, most likely...

In the meantime, I wanted to tell you about a/sync.

I've been working remotely with international clients since joining AQ in 2009, and part of a distributed team since moving to Paris in 2014. I think a lot's been figured out as to how to thrive as a remote/distributed/hybrid team, and the tools keep getting better and better. But this expertise is not evenly distributed — or even well-known.

Hello friend,

I’m cycling down the coast of Basque Country this week, downing a cortado and cheese tortilla at a bar each morning (second breakfast!) and coaxing a few more kilometers out of a rented bike that’s seen better days. Car traffic is minimal. Road conditions are decent. Going downhill feels like flying, racing the sun to the next beach enclave tucked against a cliff. An occasional cyclist sends the universal hand gesture for a moment of mutual recognition. We are the lucky ones.

This is a Postcard about creative partnerships.

I’ve always been blessed with the people I meet through work, who see me and share generously. In the last few years, my creative partnerships have become more fluid in how they evolve, with longer-term perspectives. Not all of them of course, but some. What holds my curiosity is the increased potential for such partnerships to deepen our respective practices, not to mention the joy that it can bring to our wellbeing.

Hello friend,

I hope you’re having a great weekend.

It's been pointed out to me that postcards have photos, and that it was reasonable to expect one especially when receiving a card from Italy. I fully agree. I am no longer in Bolzano but back on my couch in Paris — please find at the end a postcard-erly snap from a neighborhood walk that I just got back from.

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Hello friend,

I’m writing to you on my way to Bolzano in Italy, so north that it’s “practically Austria” according to Italian friends. I complicated a tricky sequence of trains and buses by sitting on the wrong train for three hours. It magically looped me back to Venice where I’d started… leading to highly discombobulating moments of realization and starting over. How strange that I won’t ever know where I’d been.

My current train is winding through valleys and vineyards, just south of the Dolomites. It's really pretty. It's also getting dark and hopefully I'll arrive before public transportation shuts down for the day.

I'm headed to By Design or Disaster, the annual conference of the MA program in Eco-Social Design at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. This year’s theme is Radical Care - the question is not only how to care practically today, but how to create conditions that allow all to care?.

Hello friend,

I hope you’re doing well.

Spring has arrived in Paris and hey, it’s the sun. All of the benches in my neighborhood seem to be occupied by people engrossed in crossword puzzles and newspapers. Paper versions, too. I like that about France.

I am not on a sunny bench but on my couch, with a touch of overwhelm at not having figured out a measured pace to share news. I have so many projects on the grill. Please expect more Postcards in the coming months…! I’m hitting the road on Monday so the next one will be from not-my-couch, even.

Hello friend,

I hope you had a smooth entry into the new year. Is there a sense of new-ness still, in February? I think mine is gone now, having given way to a fresh-ness as ideas for spring-summer pop up from different corners.

I'm writing to you from my couch in Paris again, back from six weeks of blue-sky-winter in Japan. AQ is opening a second base outside of Tokyo, so I got to have a wild time with the team, stretching our field research legs across volcanic mountain ranges and lakes to the questions of Where do we want to be? Who might we become there?

My working theory is that the more we work and socialize online, the more we yearn for connection to place. And for those of us at home in networks, it would stand to reason that we seek that quality in how we connect to places, too—being at home in a network of places, weaving our lives with the people that inhabit them.

Hello friend,

I'm writing to re-connect, in hopes that you may be moved to shoot back a few lines or a photo or two, to share what's on your mind these days. I've been in a slow-moving transitional state, without a clear moment to send any Postcards... which you may have forgotten you've signed up for! If so, thank you for your curiosity. Today felt like a good day to sit down and write this.

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Three bits of news

Hello friend,

In Japanese, "my boom" (mai boo-mu) means something you’re hooked on at the moment. Something trending, but between me, myself and I. It might be a particular idea, a morning routine or the new bread pudding from 7-11. Your fascination requires no reasoning. It is simply your my boom.

One of my current my boom is dramaturgy, and figuring out what’s made possible when it’s tended to in the context of a project. I find it to be a deliciously awkward word. It's different from brand, storytelling or narrative but a clear distinction eludes me. Google even asked if I meant "drama turd". I did not, and am enjoying mulling over the concept.

The baby dramaturgist in me played with metaphors, and that’s how this newsletter came to be a Postcard :)

Hello friend,

This is my first newletter, the first Postcard, and it exists because I’ve wrestled to the ground the egoism of sending what’s essentially a BCC e-mail on "news from my life!". Which felt outright lazy of me, disrespectful to us, and why would anyone care…

Except you’re not "anyone". You’re someone I’m curious to better connect with, and I'm assuming, vice versa. Perhaps less happenstance updates from one of us will lead to new possibilities.

Thank you for joining me here.