Martin Källström
knowledge / life events

Japan year

Sandra, Martin's wife at the time, was posted by Ericsson to its Yokohama office for a year of OSS (Operation Support Systems) work, and Martin went along, freelancing as a web designer and technology journalist resedagbok.nu ↗. The two of them kept a joint web diary, Sandra och Martin i Japan, from their arrival on 18 November 2000 to Martin's return flight on 10 July 2001 resedagbok.nu ↗. He calls the year "enormously educational," one that satisfied a wanderlust and let him later settle down and build something long-term (▶ 3:50, ▶ 4:15).

Arrival, and freelance over Adcore

They flew SAS via Copenhagen to Narita and taxied to the Pan Pacific Hotel, staying there on Ericsson's budget until fully booked Christmas hotels pushed them into a temporary Motomachi flat, and then their own house in January resedagbok.nu ↗. Sandra started at the Yokohama office on 20 November. Martin interviewed at the Tokyo firm Adcore on the 28th — but riding home on a packed train after, he decided: "Jag vill vara fri och göra vad jag vill och frilansa istället" (I want to be free and do what I want, and freelance instead), adding that he could consider it because Sandra earned enough that he didn't need a full-time income resedagbok.nu ↗. By 18 December he'd made it final, planning casual jobs, a small project with his friend Rickard, and freelance directories resedagbok.nu ↗. His first sale — a Computer Sweden piece on the Robodex 2000 robot show — left him unsure whether it was beginner's luck or a repeatable skill; he later covered the Tokyo Game Show too, and in 2001 did web development for Gadelius, a Swedish firm selling Scandinavian goods in Japan (▶ 6:06).

The Tamagawa shoebox, and a house full of gadgets

Over six weeks they viewed twenty to thirty apartments before finding the one that felt right in their gut: a small, square, view-less two-storey "shoebox" of about 110 square metres, built in 1999 resedagbok.nu ↗. Movers on moving day, 12 January, had to bring the sofa and bookshelves in through the balcony since the staircase was too narrow, and the house came with a refrigerator that talked, in Japanese neither of them could read resedagbok.nu ↗. His Aikido was on hold for weeks because his training clothes were still crossing the ocean by container ship — though he wore a hakama to Asakusa's Coming-of-Age Day crowds — and his digital camera's lack of a wide-angle lens limited his freelance photography resedagbok.nu ↗. They also bought a mobile phone, a DVD player in Akihabara, an earthquake kit alongside the one Sandra's office issued her, and — ordered as an export model, and confirmed once home with tape bought at Ullared — a digital video camera resedagbok.nu ↗.

Onsen, sumo, and a night among Zen monks

In March, while Sandra was ill at home, Martin rode into the mountains with her Ericsson colleagues Göran, Narumi-san and Shimbo-san to a hot spring, Heike Onsen. En route, a stranded family they helped fit snow chains tried to force a 10,000-yen note on the group in thanks — "Det var en 10 000 yen-sedel (ungefär 850 kr) hon ville ge oss som betalning" — with Shimbo refusing again and again until the woman chased the car through falling snow, a lesson in how unbearable a debt to a stranger becomes in Japan resedagbok.nu ↗. The same colleague, Narumi-san, had arranged sumo tickets for a Kokugikan tournament in January resedagbok.nu ↗; in April, an overnight stay at the Soji-ji Zen monastery with visiting friends Anna and Anders brought 4:30am meditation he found impossible — "enbart tänka på att inte tänka," think only about not thinking — which he nonetheless described as the first time all year he felt he was truly participating rather than just watching resedagbok.nu ↗.

Visitors, the return, and what stayed with him

Friends visited in waves — Helen for a Kyoto weekend, then Anna Wittrin and Anders Korsvall mid-way through their own trip around the world — before Martin's family arrived from mid-June: Ingrid, Peter, Linus, Mia and Malin, who kept a Swedish Midsummer in Japan with strawberries and matjes herring resedagbok.nu ↗. Ingrid, Peter and Linus flew home on 25 June; Mia and Malin stayed two more weeks, surfing with Martin on Sandra's birthday, and flew home with him on 10 July resedagbok.nu ↗. Sandra, whose contract Ericsson had already told her in May it would cut short that November, took her own vacation home on 6 July but stayed working in Japan for weeks after, still showing friends around as late as 20 August resedagbok.nu ↗.

Back in Sweden, Martin lived with his friends Kalle and Linnea in Ryd, Linköping — soon attending Kalle's own wedding to Patricia — and picked up a new suit for a job needing shirt and tie several days a week resedagbok.nu ↗. Framfab, his employer before Tokyo, was "borta i princip" — essentially gone — swallowed by the dot-com crash while he'd been away (▶ 10:28). Isolated in Japan he'd first encountered blogging, though it was his friend Rickard Öberg's blog, started in late 2002, that helped him understand the medium (▶ 2:02) — and he keeps one image from that year he still returns to in talks: a Japanese girl waiting alone on a train platform in harsh weather, not for the train but for someone on it, powerlessness as an early lesson in the limits of solving other people's problems (▶ 0:54).

Worth remembering