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This week’s writing circled around a quieter question for me. What does it actually mean to carry responsibility well, without carrying everything. On Monday, I wrote about a kind of tiredness that does not come from work alone. The exhaustion of constant awareness, constant reaction, and the feeling that caring means being endlessly engaged. Living and working in Japan did not remove pressure, especially in a work context. Long hours and endurance were real. But outside of work, I experienced a different assumption. Responsibility was not always individual or loudly expressed. Space, ma, was not something to fill, but something to respect. And shōganai was not resignation so much as a boundary. A reminder that not everything belongs to one person alone. That idea still steadies me, especially as a business owner, when the world feels particularly loud. On Wednesday, I shared a conversation that has stayed with me. A team doing everything right on paper, yet still feeling misaligned. I see this often, especially in organizations with Japanese and US colleagues. The issue is rarely effort. More often, it is unspoken expectations and assumptions that feel obvious to one side and invisible to the other. This is where my work tends to sit, in that quiet gap. I also reflected on how much this work depends on trust and real partnership. My collaboration with the team at Quick USA has been a good example of that, learning together how to preserve what makes Japanese organizations strong while creating enough clarity for US based teams to thrive. We will be talking in depth about this on our joint June 17th Lunch and Learn event. To end the week, I wrote about something much smaller. A Mt. Fuji shaped yokan. I have never climbed Mt. Fuji, but I have collected many small versions of it over the years. This one, carefully layered in red and white, felt like a perfect example of how something iconic becomes part of everyday life in Japan. Not distant or grand, but shared. It even nudged me back into making proper matcha, returning to the quiet rhythm of tea that I learned years ago. Sometimes these small moments say a lot about care, attention, and connection. All three pieces, in different ways, come back to the same thing. How we hold things. How much we carry. And how choosing a little space can change the weight of it. Thank you, as always, for reading. Scroll down to the event section to sign up for the Lunch and Learn event on June 17th! Warmly,
Saskia
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