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This week started in a quieter, more uncomfortable place than usual. I spent time with Hooked by Asako Yuzuki, and it stayed with me in ways I didn’t expect. Rather than offering a comforting portrait of women supporting each other, it gently but firmly unsettles that idea. The book sits in the emotional gray zones of friendship, where care and control, admiration and dependence, closeness and loneliness can blur. What struck me most was how familiar the misreadings felt, how much can go unsaid, and how quickly those silences can turn heavy. It’s not a book that explains itself or reassures the reader, and that’s precisely why it lingers. I finished it more aware of how fragile connection can be when it’s built on assumptions instead of clarity. Midweek took me in a very different direction, but oddly, the theme of coexistence carried through. I wrote about joining a session at the G1 Summit on the evolving relationship between humans and AI, not as a technical discussion, but as a deeply human one. The conversation moved away from control and toward something more complex and honestly more unsettling. What does partnership look like when the other party may eventually think in ways we don’t recognize? What remains uniquely human, and how much responsibility do we retain as creators and collaborators? From a Japan perspective, the emphasis on balance, alignment, and long term responsibility felt especially resonant. I left feeling challenged, but also reminded that leadership here is less about dominance and more about how thoughtfully we shape what we set in motion. By Friday, I needed something lighter, and thankfully, cultural humor delivered. I found myself reflecting on the strange but endearing overlap between Western dad jokes and Japanese oyaji gyagu. Same love of bad puns, very different execution. In Japan, the beauty is in the speed and the lack of explanation. Say it, let it land or not, and move on. As an expat, I’ve learned that the safest jokes are the simplest ones, or better yet, situational comments that sound almost accidental. Sometimes the real success isn’t the laugh, but the shared groan and the permission to let awkwardness exist for a moment. Altogether, this week felt like a study in relationships. Between friends, between humans and machines, and between colleagues trying to lighten the mood. None of them are as simple or as safe as we like to believe, but there’s something reassuring in paying closer attention to how they actually work. Warmly,
Saskia
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