This week’s Fun Friday topic comes from my kitchen rather than a conference room and involves a bubbling jar that has caused more than one raised eyebrow in my very Japan-focused world.

Yes, I’ve started making kombucha. And no, I do not mean kombu-cha, the comforting Japanese seaweed tea many of us know and love. That distinction has become surprisingly important.

Like many people, I was first introduced to kombucha as something you buy, not something you raise. It shows up in health food stores looking suspiciously like soda, tastes somewhere between vinegar and fruit juice, and promises all kinds of gut-related miracles. At some point, possibly after one too many conversations about fermentation traditions in Japan, I thought it might be interesting to try making it myself.

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For Fun Friday, I want to invite you to think for a moment about your own long‑running professional struggles. The ones you have worked around for years, compensated for, maybe even joked about, but never quite solved. For me, that was polite and business Japanese.

After more than 30 years of living and working with Japan, I could function just fine. I could participate in meetings, manage relationships, and get my point across. And yet, business Japanese always felt like a trap. I vividly remember trying so hard to be polite that I once said almost the opposite of what I actually meant. I looked over and saw my husband’s eyebrows slowly rise, which told me everything I needed to know about how that had landed. Moments like that are funny in retrospect, but in the moment they are frustrating and confidence‑shaking.

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I have a confession to make. I have a sock addiction. And more specifically, a tabi sock addiction.

It started innocently enough. One pair became two. Two became a small collection. And now, opening my sock drawer feels a bit like flipping through a travel journal of Japan, told entirely in patterns, colors, and split toes.

Tabi socks, with their distinctive separation of the big toe, are practical by design, originally meant for traditional footwear like geta and zori. But in Japan, practicality never excludes personality. Over time, tabi socks have evolved into canvases for creativity, seasonal motifs, regional humor, and quiet elegance. And somehow, I keep finding reasons to bring home “just one more pair.”

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It’s Fun Friday, and today I’m celebrating two small things on my desk that quietly set the tone for my day.

First up is my perpetual Totoro calendar. Solid, cheerful, and endlessly reusable, it sits there calmly marking the date with its little wooden blocks, completely unbothered by deadlines or meetings. There’s something deeply comforting about it. No flipping pages, no pressure. Just a gentle reminder of what day it is, delivered with Studio Ghibli charm. Totoro has a way of making even the most ordinary morning feel a little softer.

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Some people measure domestic happiness in flowers or love notes. I, apparently, measure it in how fast a pot of kinoko gohan disappears from my refrigerator.

And this all started because I was browsing JustOneCookbook.com again and finally tried their kinoko gohan recipe. I’m so happy I did, though I’m beginning to suspect the ripple effects are going to keep complicating my leftover planning for the foreseeable future. And yet here I am, a week later, marveling at how this humble mushroom rice keeps sabotaging my meticulously choreographed leftover strategy. I had plans for that next day bento. My husband, evidently, had other plans… namely, opening the fridge at odd hours and quietly “just having a little bowl,” a ritual that has left me with an increasingly abstract relationship to portion control.

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A few weeks ago I shared my excitement about finding Chocorooms at Costco, which felt like a tiny wink from Japan hiding in the middle of an American warehouse. I honestly assumed that would be the highlight of my snack discoveries for a while.

I was wrong.

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Whenever I travel between the US and Japan, I am reminded of how the same global brand can feel completely different depending on where you are. McDonald’s is the perfect example. In Japan, it is simply tastier. The food is fresher, the presentation is neater, and the Japan only items feel genuinely well executed instead of gimmicky.

Even though it is fast food, the Japanese sense of care shines through. The lettuce is crisp. The fries arrive actually hot. The burgers look intentionally assembled rather than rushed. And everything is seasoned with this magical just right balance that feels almost respectful.

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There are moments when living abroad makes you feel unexpectedly and delightfully five years old again. A few weekends ago, mine happened in the middle of Costco. I was cruising past the giant bags of chips and industrial sized Nutella when something made me stop so abruptly that the person behind me had to brake: Chocorooms. Actual, honest to goodness, mushroom shaped Japanese chocolate biscuits. In my American Costco.

As a Belgian, I should probably be ashamed to admit how excited I got. Belgian chocolate standards are a bit like Belgian traffic rules, strict, precise, and deeply ingrained. And let’s be honest, Chocorooms are not that kind of chocolate. They are not rich artisanal pralines with glossy shells and delicate ganache fillings. They are cheerful little snack mushrooms that taste like childhood and convenience stores and the promise of a long train ride with too many treats. And that is exactly why I love them.

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