I did not expect a roadside icicle in Japan to take me back to my childhood in Switzerland.

My wife and I were driving up to Hirugano Kogen for a day of cross country skiing. One of those quiet winter drives where the world feels slower, softer, wrapped in white. The kind of drive where conversations fade in and out, replaced by long stretches of shared silence while watching the landscape pass by.

And then I saw them.

Icicles hanging from rooftops. Long, sharp, glistening in the cold light. A frozen waterfall tucked between snow covered rock walls. We pulled over without much discussion. It was one of those unspoken agreements. This moment deserved a pause.

I grabbed my camera and walked closer.

Not because it was spectacular. Not because it was famous. Simply because something about it felt familiar.

And then it hit me.

I had seen this before. Many times. Just not recently.

When I lived in the Netherlands, winters felt different.

Colder in temperature perhaps, but softer in expression. Flat landscapes. Rarely snow. More rain than ice. Rooftops without frozen daggers hanging from the edges.

No frozen waterfalls hidden in forest cliffs.

Winter was present, but its visual drama was quieter.

And without realizing it, that absence slowly erased certain childhood visuals from my active memory.

Until Japan brought them back.

Not in Switzerland. Not where they originally belonged in my timeline. But here, in the mountains of Gifu Prefecture, on the way to a ski track in Hirugano Kogen.

Japan is culturally very different from Switzerland. Language, customs, architecture, social rhythm.

And yet winter speaks a universal language.

Snow silence feels the same.

Frozen air feels the same in your lungs.

Icicles hanging from a roof feel just as magical whether you are in the Alps or in the Japanese highlands.

In that moment, I did not feel like a foreigner observing Japan.

I felt like a child revisiting something deeply known.

Nature has a way of making distant places feel like home, even if only for a moment.