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Japan Story
A Cat Lady in Tokyo
Traditionally, being a cat lady means living in a house that always smells of Fancy Feast tinned food and not owning a single piece of clothing devoid of faux fur. Deeper than that, it’s an insult reserved for unpartnered older women – whatever older means these days – to dismiss them for not fitting the…
April 16, 2024
Japan Story
Winter Eggs
We wake in a pile of butter-yellow blankets beside a dying fire: me and three dark heads of hair. The world outside is a snowglobe – a beautiful rarity in 逗子 / Zushi / the half-mile beach where the sun was born. In the morning light, there’s a smudge of blue on the inside…
February 14, 2024
Australia Japan Story
Untethered
I prepare for Tokyo by quitting vapes. One week until departure, and I’ve not bought a single item on my list. I’m a zombie, moving through life in a cloud of smoke. My share house from the last six months is ejecting me. I have nowhere to live. It’s a repeat of last January, when…
January 19, 2024
Japan Story
The Last Stop
The smell of rain does not rise from the grass to be ignored, but my disregard that morning as I set out left me a weeping fool, caught beneath a dead lamppost as it poured.  Back home, I would have drawn the curtains back together and entertained the idea that it is okay to do nothing.…
June 16, 2023
Japan Story
I Cockblocked a Kickboxer in Tokyo
3:32am I am barely five feet tall. He is a professional kickboxer, stocky and red, and a breath away from my face. His furious words land on me as spit droplets. His finger wags, like he knows everything in the world, and I know nothing. He calls me a little girl. “Don’t point at me,”…
November 3, 2022
Japan Story
The Writer’s Routine
Six o’clock. Greeting her in the dim light, the mirror on the far wall can only fit a proportionate view of her features. It is small and inornate, but she can see a pair of eyes and ears, a nose and lips. She is a writer, but nobody the likes of Virginia Woolf stares back…
November 17, 2020
Japan Story
Rush Hour Sucks Everywhere
In Tokyo, rush hour extends to 8pm. Not because of systemic inefficiency, but simply because lots of people work later than 6 o'clock. And I am one of those unlucky folk. When I was back home in Perth -- behind my steering wheel in bumper-to-bumper traffic, dreaming of life in Tokyo and cursing…
June 16, 2020

Astray is a storytelling project centred on travel, place, culture and identity.

We’re run by a team of writers who mostly live, work and play in nipaluna / Hobart. With reverence, we acknowledge the Tasmanian Aboriginal people as the traditional and ongoing custodians of trouwunna / lutruwita / Tasmania: land that was stolen and never ceded. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.