I packed away the white bed sheet that I slept in each night at the doorway of the Bethany shop on Leith Walk, Edinburgh. Then I set off to join the family reunion in Japan.

As a reunion venue, a train in transit was rather impractical. It was difficult for family members to locate one another and hold meaningful conversations across a string of moving carriages, and there was absolute chaos whenever we entered a railway station to change service.

The good news, however, was that at one stop I managed to take some beautiful photographs of the Japanese landscape and industrial architecture. I climbed to the top of a sand and shell midden heap for the best views.