I wasn’t exactly an eco-warrior.
Before Tokyo, my idea of sustainability was remembering my reusable coffee cup… once a week. Flights? I booked the cheapest, fastest, and never looked back. Recycling? That involved staring at three bins for ten seconds, panicking, and tossing my yogurt pot into whichever one looked the least judgmental.
So when I got my Waseda University spot, I didn’t think about carbon footprints or composting. I thought about vending machines, cherry blossoms, and whether my hair could survive Tokyo’s humidity.
And then, on one very average Glasgow morning, something strange happened.
I burned my tongue. Badly. On a coffee that had promised to be lukewarm but turned out to be betrayingly volcanic. As I staggered around with a scalded mouth and wounded pride, I noticed an envelope slid halfway under my door. No stamp. Just my name, written in oddly familiar handwriting.
Inside: a single page. Dated May 2025. From me…
*
Hiya Art,
I know you. You’re the guy who once considered crisps a balanced dinner. Who thought “eco-friendly” meant remembering your tote bag once a month. But it’s time to be better.
It starts small. You calculate the carbon from your Tokyo flight – 2.3 tonnes of CO₂. Ouch. You offset it using MyClimate, mostly out of guilt. But it plants a seed.
Tokyo gets to you. You walk more than ever. You fall in love with trains (SDG 13) and find a bike hub in Kichijoji that makes you feel like a local. You start choosing slower routes, not just for the planet, but because it feels better.
You cook. Not instant noodles. Actual meals. You buy seasonal veggies from the co-op, learn to live without clingfilm, and discover Kudarashi, a site that sells surplus food at a discount (SDG 12). You even find a way to reuse leftovers creatively, last night’s rice becomes today’s onigiri. You mastered the quiet art of fridge Tetris.
The recycling? A disaster at first. PET bottles, burnables, unburnables – it’s chaos. But you learn. Thanks, multilingual Geihokukouiki guide.
You join Waseda’s sustainability circle. Somehow you managed to host a mini workshop on Ecosia, and attempt convincing people that using a tree-planting search engine is actually cool (SDG 15).
You’re not perfect. You’ll still forget your reusable bag now and then. But you’ll care. And that’ll be enough to change how you move through the world.
So breathe. Pack lighter. And yes – download the recycling schedule app before you get here.
See you soon.
– Future You 🙂
*
I sat with the letter for a while.
It didn’t sound like a lecture. It didn’t even sound like advice. Just… a reminder that the person I wanted to be wasn’t that far away. The future version of me didn’t sound like a superhero. More like someone who paid more attention. Tried a little harder. Made smaller choices that, together, mattered.
Maybe I could become him.
Maybe I already had…
References:
https://co2.myclimate.org
https://sdgs.un.org/goals
https://docomo-cycle.jp
https://www.kuradashi.jp
http://www.geihokukouiki.jp/contents/pdf/gomi-dashikata-gaikoku/001-english.pdf
https://www.ecosia.org
