The hojicha came in a cup the colour of the rain outside — that toasted, slightly mineral brown that doesn’t really exist in coffee, the kind of brown that knows it’s a tea. The café is up a small staircase off Shijo and the woman who runs it has been there, by my rough count, longer than i’ve been writing.

I open the notebook. The last thing in it is a sentence about a bridge in Buenos Aires, written in what looks like another person’s handwriting. That’s how it goes when you stop for too long — you have to meet your old self at a table and re-introduce yourselves.

The rain doesn’t stop until lunchtime. By then I’ve written maybe three hundred words and crossed out two hundred of them. A good morning.