Between 2001 and 2005 my wife and I were living in Tokyo and we were often passing by an apartment with a little garden which I always said to my wife, European people must live here, the BBQ and the way the garden is arranged definitely don’t look like the Japanese way. And we always said we should ring at the door and try to connect with those people as it was a quiet Japanese neighborhood but we never did.

Several years later we moved to Vienna, Austria, with our newborn baby (born in Tokyo 7 weeks previously); we moved in and went for the first time to the new pediatrician. Ww showed him the Japanese health book from the clinic where our son was born. The doctor looked at us and told us “omg, I have a family with the same health book and a little girl more or less the same age as your son; you should contact them!”

So we called them letting them know we were living in Tokyo and the Vienniese pediatrician recognized your and our babies health books as coming from the same clinic. So they started to ask us where we lived in Tokyo; we answered Setagaya-ku, but where? In Shimouma, yes, but where in itchi-ome? At that point we realized we were livin pretty close to each other in Tokyo, and then we asked if they were living near the 7/11 in the corner building with a small garden on the ground floor with a big BBQ in the garden and the swing. So we were really neighbors in Tokyo but we met 12000 km from there and became friends. Small world!!!