On a sunny day off in spring, I met a girl named Sae in the streets of Shinjuku. As we walked, we came across thrift stores, talked about our need to be constantly on our phones and became friends. Two months later, as we were eating in a Thai restaurant, a Japanese friend I met in Paris six month ago recognized me from across the the place. I couldn't remember his name, but I knew it sounded like the wordzebra. As we were finishing our meals, Sae told me she was moving to the country side the next day, far away from the noisy city we were in, Tokyo. She invited me to come visit her when she'll be all settled, but when I showed her when I was leaving tokyo, I realized I didn't even had to slide down the calendar. I had only two weeks left. 

One week later, I was jumping in the first train after finishing work. As the train moved on, I realized that Sae wasn't joking about leaving deep in the mountains. 

This series of drawings are the result of all the moments when I felt like floating there. As Sae's place was in the middle of nowhere in the forest, everything felt different. There were no more the cross walks' fake bird noises, the sound of the salarymen' hurried footsteps and the subway loud speakers repeating over and over again not to walk staring at your phone.

As the two days I visited her in July felt so refreshing, I went back in August for a week, when the whole country was getting prepared to face a typhoon.