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A Cat Lady in Tokyo
Traditionally, being a cat lady means living in a house that always smells of Fancy Feast tinned food and not owning a single piece of clothing devoid of faux fur. Deeper than that, it’s an insult reserved for unpartnered older women – whatever older means these days – to dismiss them for not fitting the…
Winter Eggs
We wake in a pile of butter-yellow blankets beside a dying fire: me and three dark heads of hair. The world outside is a snowglobe – a beautiful rarity in 逗子 / Zushi / the half-mile beach where the sun was born. In the morning light, there’s a smudge of blue on the inside…
Untethered
I prepare for Tokyo by quitting vapes. One week until departure, and I’ve not bought a single item on my list. I’m a zombie, moving through life in a cloud of smoke. My share house from the last six months is ejecting me. I have nowhere to live. It’s a repeat of last January, when…
The Last Stop
The smell of rain does not rise from the grass to be ignored, but my disregard that morning as I set out left me a weeping fool, caught beneath a dead lamppost as it poured.  Back home, I would have drawn the curtains back together and entertained the idea that it is okay to do nothing.…
I Cockblocked a Kickboxer in Tokyo
3:32am I am barely five feet tall. He is a professional kickboxer, stocky and red, and a breath away from my face. His furious words land on me as spit droplets. His finger wags, like he knows everything in the world, and I know nothing. He calls me a little girl. “Don’t point at me,”…
A Day in the Life of a Bear Conservationist
While we’re all familiar with the hype around shark attacks in Australia, how many of us have ever heard about bear attacks in Japan? Conflict with these animals has been increasing over the last 10 years, with a whopping total of 156 attacks recorded in 2020. Crop damage has also cost 426.7 million yen ($5…

Astray is a storytelling project centred on travel, place, culture and identity.

We’re run by a team of writers who mostly live, work and play in nipaluna / Hobart. With reverence, we acknowledge the Tasmanian Aboriginal people as the traditional and ongoing custodians of trouwunna / lutruwita / Tasmania: land that was stolen and never ceded. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.