I did not expect a gasoline price sign to hit me with a wave of memories. Yesterday I stopped at a gas station in my old neighbourhood in Rijswijk while using my mother’s car during my visit. It was meant to be a quick and ordinary stop. I looked up at the digital price board and had to blink a few times. The number per liter was so high that it felt almost unreal, as if someone had accidentally added an extra digit. For a moment I simply stood there taking it in.

A memory surfaced from about five years ago, just before I handed in my Dutch lease car. Back then I used to fill up at the very same gas station I stood yesterday. I remember paying around one euro fifty per liter. It already felt expensive at the time. That number stayed with me and became my internal reference for what gasoline in the Netherlands should cost. I never imagined how much it would rise in only a few years.

Living in Japan has reshaped my sense of what feels normal. Filling up for around 170 yen per liter, which is about 94 cents in euro terms, has become part of daily life. So standing in Rijswijk again and seeing a Dutch price that was nearly double what I pay in Japan made the contrast between these two worlds suddenly very clear.