Experiences – Life – Inspiration 🇨🇭🇯🇵

When you move countries, luggage space becomes a strange courtroom.

Every object must defend its right to exist.

Every kilogram must justify itself.

In the Netherlands, while sorting through my apartment, I finally did what most sensible adults do. I sold the big things. The tower speakers. The amplifier. Solid gear. Heavy. Expensive. Very replaceable in theory.

In practice, selling my high end audio system took an entire month.

Not because there were no buyers. But because I wanted the right buyer. Someone who understood what that system was. Someone who would listen to it properly. Someone who would not casually connect it to questionable cables and call it a day.

I had put that system together carefully. Piece by piece. I listened to music through it passionately during my time in the Netherlands. It was worth around 5000 euro altogether, and while I told myself I just wanted a fair price, I was clearly also interviewing people for emotional compatibility.

Eventually, it found a new home through Marktplaats, the Dutch version of eBay. And once it was gone, I felt nothing but relief.

That part was easy.

Mostly.

Because despite all this talk about selling electronics, I did bring one small device with me to Japan.

A compact desktop amplifier.

It did not survive the selling process because the offers never felt right. And since it was small enough to fit into my carry on luggage without pushing me over the 10 kg limit, it quietly earned its place.

Not because it won an emotional argument.

But because it had a future.

Right now, it sits on my home office desk in Japan, next to the keyboard I am typing on. The plan is simple. A pair of Japanese bookshelf speakers. One on the left of the monitor. One on the right. Enough to enjoy music properly while working. Enough to keep an audiophile passion alive without needing a living room to justify it.

The difficult decisions started after that.

Somehow, in a suitcase with very limited space, a cheese curler made the cut.

Not just the curler.

It came with a full piece of Tête de Moine from the cheese section at Hanos. A place I visited many times with my mother back in the Netherlands. Apparently, that memory weighs less than a speaker but more than common sense.

I already know that once this cheese is gone, I will be ordering Tête de Moine online in Japan. At prices that will make absolutely no sense. But future me can deal with that.

Then there was the cheese situation.

I also brought a piece of Leerdammer, which is basically the friendly cousin of Emmenthaler. Familiar. Comforting. Full of holes and good intentions.

Next to it, a piece of old Dutch cheese. The kind with those tiny crystal like salt bits inside. The cheese that quietly crunches back at you when you bite it. That cheese does not travel lightly. But apparently, neither do I.

At this point, the suitcase already had strong opinions.

And yet, somehow, I still found space for a 600 gram package of Emmi cheese fondue.

I bought it at the Saturday market in Old Rijswijk. It was on sale. Three packs for ten euro. A deal so good it felt irresponsible not to buy it. Even more irresponsible, perhaps, to carry one of them halfway across the world.

A sealed bag of cheese fondue is not light. It is not small. It does not pretend to be practical.

But it does represent winter evenings, shared meals, and the quiet confidence that melted cheese improves most life situations.

Clearly, that argument won.

If anyone ever wonders what I value in life, they can start with my dairy choices.

Just when I thought the suitcase negotiations were over, I remembered the som tam maker.

This one came with history.

My wife loves making som tam. The version my mother taught her back when we were still in the Netherlands. Somewhere between chopping, pounding, tasting, and laughing, that recipe became ours. The som tam maker simply did not make it to Japan when I relocated earlier. At that time, everything was already packed. There was no space left for bulky emotional kitchen equipment.

This time was different.

When I saw it again in the apartment, my mother looked at it and said something very practical.

Just take it with you.

I had doubts. Many doubts. The pot, which I now know is called the mortar, is bulky. Heavy. Solid. The wooden stick, the pestle, looks like something that could easily raise questions.

So I did what any responsible adult does. I checked the Korean Air luggage rules.

After careful reading, I found my loophole.

The mortar could be categorised as a fragile item and therefore needed to be packed in my carry on luggage. Which sounds reassuring, until you imagine airport security watching someone gently cradle a large stone pot like a newborn.

The pestle was another story.

There was no universe in which that was going into my carry on luggage. That thing could very reasonably be classified as a clobber weapon. So it was sent to the checked luggage, where it could not alarm anyone or express its true potential.

Against all expectations, everything passed through customs without a single raised eyebrow.

Apparently, international borders are perfectly fine with culinary heritage, as long as you distribute the potential weapons wisely.

And then there was the jar of lingonberry sauce.

More like a marmalade, really.

I bought it at Ikea Delft. A 400 gram jar for 2.69 euro. An absolute bargain. Especially considering that when my wife and I visited Ikea Nagoya earlier this year, they did not sell it there.

That alone felt like a perfectly valid reason to smuggle Scandinavian berry economics across continents.

I did not bring furniture.

I did not bring large electronics.

I did not bring anything that would impress a moving company.

But I did bring cheese rituals, cheese reserves, a stubborn mortar, a jar of berry logic that made no financial sense whatsoever, and just enough audio equipment to make Japan sound like home.

Packing, I learned, is never about what fits.

It is about what feels wrong to leave behind.

Somewhere between selling speakers to the right person, protecting discounted fondue from extinction, and negotiating with airline regulations, I realized something comforting. Home is not a place you recreate all at once. It arrives in small, unreasonable choices.

And apparently, it smells faintly of cheese.

Oh and in case you are wondering what som tam is, here is the link. And if you don’t know what a cheese curler and a Tête de Moine is, here is also the link.