A charming mix of ancient traditions and modern pop culture

You can see autumn in the trees, in fashion, and on the plate. It is enough to step into a konbini to notice that something has changed: Mont Blanc desserts appear on the shelves in plastic cups, puddings flavoured with baked sweet potato, limited-edition “Pumpkin Pudding” Kit Kats, chestnut-flavoured Pocky. In cafés, small purple cheesecakes made from murasaki imo sprout up, and at vegetable markets orange kaki persimmons and dark clusters of kyoho grapes pile up. The Japanese call this shokuyoku no aki – “autumn appetite.” But this appetite is not just a matter of the stomach. It is also a very specific way of experiencing autumn: through the tastes, colours and forms of tiny, carefully prepared sweets which the Japanese call wagashi (和菓子).

The word wagashi itself is already a little story. The character 和 means both “Japan” and “harmony,” the character 菓 – today “sweet,” but in the past simply “fruit.” In the oldest poetry of the Man’yōshū, kashi meant precisely fruit: persimmons, peaches, the mysterious tachibana – a citrus which, according to legend, bestowed longevity. Only many centuries later, in the Edo period, when the widespread use of sugar gave birth to intricately moulded nerikiri, blocks of yokan and dozens of varieties of mochi, did it become necessary to distinguish “our” sweets from the ever more numerous cakes from the West. This is how wagashi – “Japanese sweets” – came into being, built from rice, azuki beans, chestnuts, agar and seasonal fruit, created with the intention of accompanying tea and the changing seasons. To this day, classic wagashi are like edible haiku: visually refined, sparingly sweet, full of symbols – a maple leaf made of bean paste, a moon hidden in the cross-section of a cake, a chestnut sphere that tastes like a November evening.

In old texts we find sweets at court in Genji monogatari, aozashi arranged by Sei Shōnagon on the lid of an inkstone, playful mochi in kyōgen and rakugo, and in modern literature – Natsume Sōseki’s delight at the sheen of a block of yokan or Akutagawa’s melancholy over a lost bar serving bean soup. Contemporary neo-wagashi add whipped cream, chocolate and plates straight out of fine dining restaurants to all this, but the essence remains the same: to use seasonal autumn ingredients to arrest, just for a moment, something that is by nature fleeting. In today’s slightly lighter piece, we will therefore try to walk through autumnal Japan… along a path of sweets.

What exactly are wagashi – and why does autumn suit them so well?

Let us begin with the word itself. Wagashi is written with the characters 和菓子. The first one, 和 (wa), is familiar from many contexts: it appears as “Japan” in certain compounds (for example 和食 – Japanese cuisine – more on why “wa” means Japan: Why Do We Say "Japan" While the Japanese Say "Nihon"? From Oyashima to Zipangu – A Millennia-Long Game of Telephone), and also means “harmony,” “accord,” “gentleness.” The second, 菓 (kashi / gashi), originally meant simply… fruit and nuts. Something that grows on a tree, that can be eaten between meals, that is “sweet” in its original sense. Only with time did 菓 begin to shift in meaning from “fruit” towards “sweets” in our understanding.

So when we say wagashi, we are literally speaking of “Japanese sweets” – but this “Japanese” is not just a label of origin. It is an entire philosophy: seasonality, restrained sweetness, reliance on plant-based ingredients and a deep connection with tea, literature and ritual.

Interestingly, for many centuries no one in Japan felt the need for a separate word wagashi. There was simply kashi – sweets still strongly tied to the world of fruit. In the Edo period, when the art of refined confections made from rice, beans, chestnuts and agar flourished thanks to the spread of sugar, the word kashi encompassed at once the fruit placed on a tray for tea and the elaborate nerikiri shaped like a maple leaf. It was only at the end of the nineteenth century, when cakes, creams and chocolates from Europe firmly entered Japan, that it became necessary to distinguish what was “ours” from what was “Western.” Thus arose the division into wagashi (和菓子) and yōgashi (洋菓子) – Japanese and Western sweets.

It is worth remembering that the boundary is not absolute. Some Western pastries have made themselves so comfortable on the Pacific shores that today they are regarded as wagashi – such as castella, a Portuguese sponge cake which, after several centuries of Japanese modifications, became so “native” that it ended up on the 和 (wa) side rather than the 洋 (yō) side. Contemporary patisseries, in turn, create “neo-wagashi,” hybrids with whipped cream and chocolate that look like desserts from fine dining restaurants and at the same time rely on traditional plant-based bases: bean paste, chestnuts or rice dough.

If, however, we strip away all the historical nuances, what remains is a simple core: wagashi are sweets that stay close to nature and the seasons. Sugar is present in them, but surprisingly discreet – this is not the kind of sweetness that aims to overwhelm the palate, but one that gently amplifies the flavour of chestnut, rice, beans, pumpkin or sweet potato. What is sweet here is what grows: grain, fruit, tuber. Sugar is only a marginal commentary.

Before wagashi became what we put on a small plate next to a teacup today, they were simply… better fruit. In the oldest poetry, such as the Man’yōshū, kashi refers above all to fruit trees: persimmons, plums, pears, tachibana. Tachibana, an evergreen citrus plant, even grows into the role of “king of sweets” – Emperor Shōmu is said to have called it the most exquisite of the kashi. The legend of Tajimamori, the courtier sent to a mythical land in search of the “fruit of eternal youth,” also revolves around this botanical sweetness. Before blocks of yokan appeared, it was in the fruit, not in sugar, that the promise of happiness and longevity was hidden.

Only later – with the development of rice cultivation, the influx of technologies from China, and finally the dramatic leap in the availability of sugar in Edo – did kashi begin to be more clearly associated with processed sweetness: cakes, dumplings, bean paste, agar jellies. In the Edo period, the golden age of peace and urban culture, wagashi were refined to the level of small works of art. It was then that illustrated catalogues of sweets appeared, nerikiri shaped into flowers and birds, as well as an entire subtle etiquette: how to serve them, with which tea to pair them, in what order to eat them.

One might say that classic wagashi are a kind of “edible haiku.” They have their strict rules – proportions, shapes, seasonal motifs – but within these frames confectioners can fit a surprisingly large amount of emotion and meaning. From the outside they are only a small ball, a leaf, a chestnut. Inside – a whole story about autumn rain, the moon over the fields, visits to ancestors during Higan. Haiku does something similar with language: it does not explain the world directly, but brushes against it with a few characters. Wagashi brushes against it with a few ingredients.

Their relationship with tea is also important. It is difficult to talk about wagashi without a bowl of strong green matcha or a milder sencha or hojicha. In the tea ceremony, sweetness always appears before the drink: first a small wagashi, only then the bitter, thick matcha. This is no coincidence. Wagashi prepares the tongue and the body for the encounter with tea, softens its astringency and brings out its aroma. It is a duet, not a solo. Sweetness without tea loses part of its meaning; tea without wagashi – part of its comfort.

Why, then, is autumn a particularly special time for wagashi? Firstly – for very prosaic reasons. It is the season in which ingredients appear that fit perfectly into the philosophy of these sweets: chestnuts (kuri), sweet potatoes (satsumaimo, murasaki imo), pumpkin (kabocha), persimmons (kaki), juicy nashi pears, kyoho grapes and shine muscat. Each of these products is so distinctive that it does not need to be masked. It is enough to highlight it: a little sugar, a pinch of salt, perhaps some bean paste and starch.

Secondly – autumn has its own colour and texture, which wagashi are unbelievably good at capturing. Thin threads of chestnut cream squeezed from a piping bag into a soft, autumnal dome of Mont Blanc, a dense, matte block of imo-yokan, delicate colour transitions in a nerikiri formed in the likeness of a reddening maple leaf – all of this are visual equivalents of kōyō, the autumn colouring of leaves. The confectioner is not decorating at random here. He is translating the autumn landscape into the language of bean paste, rice dough and chestnuts.

And thirdly – in Japanese sensibility, autumn is a season of melancholy, a gentle fatigue after summer, the need to warm oneself and to seek out “soft” rituals. Shokuyoku no aki, “autumn appetite,” is not only the desire to eat. It is also an appetite for things that somehow help to tame the fact that the day is growing shorter, the leaves are falling, and another year is slowly drawing to a close. Autumn wagashi are perfectly suited to this: they are warm in flavour, soft in texture, often served hot (yaki-imo, oshiruko), and at the same time strongly tied to tradition.

When, in Akutagawa’s late poems, the motif of sweet bean soup keeps appearing, when in Sōseki’s work a character meditates on the sheen of a block of yokan, and when in "Genji monogatari", after kemari matches (what is that? – more here: Kemari – A Ball Game from Medieval Japan That Taught Self-Control Instead of Competition), sweets are served on camellia leaves, it is not just about snacking. Wagashi and their predecessors – fruit, sticky rice cakes, sweet bean soups – are part of an emotional landscape in which autumn is not only weather, but also a state of mind.

Autumn flavours in wagashi

When autumn begins in Japan, words such as: kuri 栗, satsumaimo さつまいも, kabocha かぼちゃ, kaki 柿, nashi 梨 start appearing on menus and in confectionery display cases. These are not just ingredients. They are the season, the weather and the mood filtered through the kitchen. Wagashi simply pick up these signals and transform them into small, edible landscapes.

Chestnut – the king of autumn sweetness

Chestnut in Japanese is kuri – written with a single, simple character 栗, which in earlier times meant simply “tree nut.” Today it is hard to imagine autumn wagashi without it. Kuri appears in sweets at every level: from very simple to extravagantly refined.

At one end of the spectrum we have kuri kinton 栗きんとん – a paste made from boiled chestnuts with added sugar, sometimes only partially mashed so that perceptible pieces remain. The name is beautifully multivalent: 金団 (kinton) means “golden nugget,” also associated with New Year prosperity, so such a dessert immediately carries with it the promise of abundance. From this paste one can form simple, rustic sweets, use it to fill manjū (a kind of soft bun with a filling), or simply eat it with a spoon alongside tea.

Chestnut also appears in yokan – a firm, jelly-like sweet made from red bean paste and agar. Kuri yokan is essentially a dialogue between two autumn flavours: the deep sweetness of anko and the slightly floury, “earthy” texture of chestnut pieces set within it.

There is also a separate category of chestnuts treated like jewellery. Kuri no shibukawani 栗の渋皮煮 are whole chestnuts that retain a thin brown inner skin, repeatedly parboiled with baking soda to remove bitterness, then patiently simmered in syrup. It is one of those sweets that you make at home once in many years, because they require angelic patience – but in return they taste like a Japanese answer to French candied chestnuts. From their paste another dessert is created: kuri kanoko 栗かの子, whose name alludes to the dappled fur of a fawn (鹿の子). The juxtaposition of the creamy mass and the glossy whole chestnuts recalls the speckles on a deer’s coat – art and zoology meet here on a teaspoon.

And then there is Mont Blanc. On the face of it a French dessert, named after an Alpine peak, but in Japan so closely tied to the autumn chestnut season that it could easily be granted honorary wagashi status. A Japanese patisserie takes a shortcrust base or sponge cake, sometimes a thin layer of meringue, adds a modest dome of cream or custard, and then covers everything with thin strands of chestnut cream piped from a pastry bag. These strands arrange themselves like a soft woollen hat – perfectly autumnal, slightly nostalgic, neither childish nor yet completely “grown-up.” Interestingly, in Japanese cafés Mont Blanc is often available all year round, but it is in autumn that it gains an extra life: versions with local chestnuts, limited editions in konbini, autumn adverts with maple leaves in the background. In this guise, kuri is no longer just an ingredient. It becomes a sign of the season.

There is something profoundly “autumnal” about chestnut also on the level of emotion. It is not a light, summery sweetness. It is a dense, floury, slightly heavy flavour, ideal for an afternoon tea.

Satsumaimo and murasaki imo

If chestnut is the king of autumn elegance, then satsumaimo is its kindly provincial cousin – simple, warm-hearted, a little awkward, but always greeted with a smile. The Japanese sweet potato has purple skin and yellow flesh, and its name refers to the former province of Satsuma in southern Kyūshū, from where it spread (more about the culture of the potato in Japan you can find here: The Potato Festival in Japan: Jaga Matsuri’s Spud Dances beneath Mount Yōtei). Its darker, completely purple variety is murasaki imo, literally “purple potato.”

The most typical form of autumn satsumaimo is yaki imo – simply baked sweet potato. In theory nothing could be simpler; in practice it is one of the most nostalgic flavours (and sounds!) of autumn streets. Even today, in some districts of Tokyo or in smaller towns, you can hear the drawn-out calls of vendors driving around with an oven in the back of their truck: “ya~ki imo~, ishi yaki imo~.” This is “stone-baked potato,” slowly roasted on heated pebbles until the skin becomes charred and the flesh inside – dense, creamy, sweet as dessert. It is hard to think of a more democratic autumn sweet: this is not wagashi from a tea pavilion, but something you eat on a bench in the park, warming your hands on the hot paper.

The same tuber takes on slightly more orderly forms in the world of wagashi. Imo yokan 芋羊羹, “sweet potato yokan,” was born at the beginning of the twentieth century as a clever way of using up cheap, surplus sweet potatoes. Its creators in Asakusa – the owner of a potato and coal warehouse and a confectioner – came up with the idea of using mashed satsumaimo instead of expensive azuki paste, mixed with sugar and salt and formed into rectangular blocks. The result was a dessert with a shorter shelf life, but closer to autumn: with a note of baked tuber, dense, delicately fibrous. To this day, Funawa of Asakusa (a well-known “retro” confectionery shop) sells imo yokan that tastes at once old-fashioned and surprisingly contemporary – like a minimalist vegan cake without unnecessary additions.

Contemporary Japan has gone even further. Satsumaimo and murasaki imo have ended up in ice cream, cakes, muffins and tartlets. Sweet potato cake – usually a dense mixture of sweet potato, cream and butter baked in small, golden boat-shaped shells – is a patisserie classic. Murasaki imo ice, in turn, combines a light, milky base with a colour that no food colouring would be ashamed of, except that this little purple hue comes 100% from the tuber. And somewhere in between appears daigaku imo, the “university potato”: chunks of fried sweet potato in thick caramel with sesame, supposedly the favourite snack of poor students in the Taishō period. Sweet potato, sugar, oil – cheap, filling, the perfect fuel for autumn evenings with a book or an exam.

In the background there is yet another layer of meaning. For many Japanese people, satsumaimo is the taste of childhood: school bonfires, home cooking, snacks prepared by grandma. Unlike chestnuts, which have something festive about them, the sweet potato is “everyday,” but precisely for that reason it is ideal for what you might call “domestic autumn”: sweatpants, warm socks, tea and a small plate of something sweet that smells a bit of smoke and a bit of the oven.

Kabocha

The word pumpkin in Japan can be a source of amusing misunderstandings. When we think “pumpkin,” we see the big orange sphere from Halloween films – pumpkin, or in Japanised form: “panpukin”; the Japanese, however, have their own pumpkin: kabocha – a relatively small, dark green vegetable with intensely orange flesh. Kabocha is not particularly suited to being carved into a Halloween lantern: it is heavy, hard, somewhat uncooperative for carving. But once baked or simmered in broth it becomes soft, buttery and surprisingly sweet.

It is no wonder that it very quickly entered the world of wagashi. In the simplest version we have kabocha purin – something between a pudding and a light cheesecake, with the consistency of flan and a flavour that evokes both dessert and an autumn cream soup at the same time. In a more traditional guise, pumpkin finds its way into mizuyōkan as delicate, cool cubes set in jelly – though that belongs more to late summer. In autumn you will more often see pumpkin in warm, soft forms: small kabocha dango dumplings served with a soy-and-sugar sauce or kinako, or in fillings for manjū and yeasted buns with anko.

Parallel to this traditional current, kabocha has gone through a kind of “pop-cultural re-orientalisation.” It is enough to step into a konbini in autumn: Pumpkin Kit Kat, pumpkin Pocky, limited-edition flavours of cookies and bars whose packaging is haunted by smiling ghosts and orange pumpkins. Sometimes they are labelled パンプキン, sometimes かぼちゃ, but the flavour most often belongs to kabocha itself, not to that Hollywood pumpkin for lanterns. It is an intriguing paradox: the Western aesthetics of Halloween have attached themselves to a very Japanese, sweetish flesh. And thus yet another bridge has been built between wagashi and the world of Western sweets – a shared autumn pumpkin that sometimes appears as nerikiri in the shape of a small jack-o’-lantern, and at other times as a filling in a limited-edition chocolate.

Autumn fruits: kaki, nashi and budou

When the first pyramids of orange kaki appear at markets in Japan, you know that summer is truly over. Kaki 柿 is sometimes called “the divine fruit of autumn,” and it is easy to see why. In its raw form it has a crisp, juicy flesh with a flavour somewhere between pear and honey. In its dried form – hoshigaki – it undergoes an almost alchemical transformation. The fruits are peeled and hung on strings in the air, sometimes gently massaged by hand during drying, until all the water slowly evaporates and a delicate “snow” of natural sugar appears on the surface. Such dried kaki has the consistency of soft toffee and a deep, concentrated taste of autumn.

Wagashi eagerly makes use of this fruit. There are sweets in which whole dried kaki are stuffed with bean paste and nuts, sliced pieces are added to agar jellies, and the shape and colour of persimmon have inspired countless autumn nerikiri. In Japanese awareness, kaki also carries a subtle note of transience: it overripens quickly, spoils easily, and you have to know how to eat it “just in time.”

The pear nashi – 梨 in Japanese – is a fruit that Japan has known well since ancient times, but in our eyes it looks somewhat like an interspecies compromise: the shape of an apple, the texture of a very juicy pear, a clear, not overly sweet flavour. In autumn, nashi is most often eaten in the simplest way: chilled, peeled, cut into crescents and served after dinner or as a snack. However, it too finds its way into the world of desserts: thin slices end up in transparent jellies, tarts, fruit salads, anmitsu. The old meaning of the word 菓子 as “fruit” returns here very clearly – the distance between an elaborate wagashi from a tea room and a small bowl with a few pieces of nashi is not so great. They are simply different degrees of the same autumn longing for fresh sweetness.

And finally, grapes – budō 葡萄. In Japan, autumn is the season for impressive, almost exaggerated clusters of varieties such as Kyoho or Shine Muscat. Kyoho are dark, huge, with flesh that tastes like young wine; the skin is usually removed in a single motion (if one peels it at all). Shine Muscat – in Japanese orthography – are light green, seedless grapes with a delicate aroma and the reputation of a luxury fruit. Often sold in decorative boxes, they can be as prestigious a gift as a box of expensive wagashi.

Desserts with Kyoho and Shine Muscat balance between worlds. On the one hand there are tarts, cheesecakes and creamy parfaits in which the fruit rests on whipped cream next to Western-style creams. On the other – more traditional compositions, where grapes appear as the main flavour motif of anmitsu or of a delicate, transparent agar jelly. This is another example of the autumn “borderland”: fruits at the peak of their season becoming a shared language for wagashi and Western sweets.

Ginnan, the ginkgo nut – an autumn flavour for the brave

To finish our autumn company, something less obvious, though very striking in the Japanese landscape: ginnan ぎんなん, the edible seeds of ginkgo. In autumn, ginkgo avenues in Tokyo, Kyoto or Sendai turn into golden corridors that look like a ready-made set for a film. Unfortunately, beneath this gold there lies a less poetic aspect: falling ginkgo fruits emit a famously strong, intense smell that makes many people grimace.

Inside this unpleasant little sphere, however, is a pale green nut which, once roasted, becomes one of the typical autumn additions to dishes. Ginnan appears in chawanmushi – a delicate steamed egg “custard” – or in takikomi gohan, rice cooked with seasonal ingredients. In izakaya in autumn you can simply order a small bowl of roasted ginnan: slightly bitter, springy, served with salt. These are no longer sweets, but a savoury snack for sake; yet from the perspective of seasonality it is the same impulse as in the case of wagashi: to take what autumn offers and draw out its character – even if that character is slightly controversial.

There is something very Japanese in this: even a tree famous for its unpleasant smell must, at some point, find its way into the kitchen. Autumn wagashi, chestnuts, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, fruit, and somewhere on the side roasted ginnan – all of these come together into one big story about autumn, in which there is room both for soft sweetness and for slightly bitter notes. Just like in life.

Hot and sweet

When we speak today of autumn sweets in Japan, we no longer stop only at old-style confectioners like Funawa or scenes from "Genji monogatari." It is enough to walk into the nearest konbini to see how tradition and pop culture play tag with autumn. Miniature Mont Blanc in plastic cups land on the shelves, sweet potato-flavoured puddings, limited-edition “Chestnut” Pocky, pumpkin pudding Kit Kats and bars pretending to be a piece of baked yaki imo in cream form.

On top of that, convenience store chains add their own seasonal hits: the famous “melting sweet potato” at Seven-Eleven, a dessert that is essentially condensed, creamy satsumaimo in a small cup, roll cakes inspired by baked sweet potato, Mont Blanc ice cream. Strictly speaking, these are not wagashi in the classical sense, but in terms of flavour they play in the same league: chestnut, sweet potato, pumpkin, kaki, hojicha. Autumn moves into plastic but does not lose its aroma.

A parallel revolution is taking place in cafés. Traditional motifs find their way onto plates that look like they came straight from Instagram. Mont Blanc is no longer just a mound of chestnut cream – it appears in a “hollow inside” version with a crisp centre, or in a miniature version served in glass, layer by layer: agar with hojicha at the bottom, then chestnut kanoko, crowned with a cobweb of threaded cream. Murasaki imo cheesecake lines up in display cases next to classic cheesecake, but its intense purple makes it clear that this is still Japan, not a New York bakery.

More and more places are experimenting with “wagashi in a glass”: traditional components – anko, mochi, pieces of kaki, kabocha cream – arranged vertically in a goblet like a degustation dessert. Instead of plain matcha, autumn lattes appear: hojicha with foam, drinks with yaki imo purée, teas with added chestnut purée. We still have the same flavours, but in forms borrowed from fine dining and Western-style cafés.

This is what is increasingly called neo-wagashi: sweets that stand with one foot in the world of Edo and the other in the culture of speciality coffee and Instagram flat lays. Their base remains classic – anko, mochi, chestnuts, sweet potatoes, agar – but alongside them appear whipped cream, crème pâtissière, chocolate, caramel sauces, isomalt decorations. Tradition is not a museum piece here, but a backbone to which, every year in autumn, a new layer is attached – a different shade of murasaki imo purple, a new shape of Mont Blanc, yet another idea for combining chestnut with cacao.

Amid all this aesthetic splendour, it is worth remembering that wagashi – in both classical and modern form – work best when we allow them to become a small ritual. The Japanese school of eating says: look first. A nerikiri in the shape of a maple leaf is not there to vanish into your mouth in a second; first let your eyes enjoy the transition of colours from yellow to red, the delicate relief of veins. Then smell it – some wagashi are almost scentless, others carry a subtle note of citrus peel, toasted rice, sesame. Only at the end do you bite and allow this meticulously moulded momiji leaf to melt in a single mouthful. It is a little cruel – just like the moment when the wind tears a real leaf from a branch – but precisely because of that the sweetness becomes an exercise in accepting transience.

It is easy to imagine a few such autumn scenes. Round tsukimi dango arranged in a small pyramid during a moon-viewing evening, when the whole family sits by the open window and hojicha steams in their bowls. Momiji manju brought as omiyage from Miyajima – small sponge cakes in the shape of maple leaves, filled with anko or chestnut, eaten at the office with afternoon coffee, bringing a touch of temple calm into the garish reality of an open-plan space. Or imo-yokan bought in Asakusa, slipped into a bag and later eaten on a bench in Ueno Park among falling ginkgo leaves – a sweetness that tastes different when dry leaves rustle underfoot and the air is already distinctly cool. Each of these moments is not just “eating something tasty,” but an attempt to capture the season in three bites.

Even if you are in Poland this year – you can still draw on this tradition. Perhaps it is enough to start looking at your own sweets as little haiku. To see in a slice of apple pie not “just another portion of sugar,” but a miniature landscape: the warmth of the oven, the smell of cinnamon, the sound of rain outside the window, the fact that this particular pie exists only today, with this apple, at this time. Maybe it is worth sitting down with a cup of tea and a piece of blueberry bun the way a Japanese person sits down with nerikiri – for a moment in silence, with a brief awareness that this small, fleeting happiness will not last.

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"Strong Japanese Women"

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    未開    ソビエライ

 An enthusiast of Asian culture with a deep appreciation for the diverse philosophies of the world. By education, a psychologist and philologist specializing in Korean studies. At heart, a programmer (primarily for Android) and a passionate technology enthusiast, as well as a practitioner of Zen and mono no aware. In moments of tranquility, adheres to a disciplined lifestyle, firmly believing that perseverance, continuous personal growth, and dedication to one's passions are the wisest paths in life. Author of the book "Strong Women of Japan" (>>see more)

Personal motto:

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." - Albert Einstein (probably)

  Mike Soray

   (aka Michał Sobieraj)

未開    ソビエライ

 An enthusiast of Asian culture with a deep appreciation for the diverse philosophies of the world. By education, a psychologist and philologist specializing in Korean studies. At heart, a programmer (primarily for Android) and a passionate technology enthusiast, as well as a practitioner of Zen and mono no aware. In moments of tranquility, adheres to a disciplined lifestyle, firmly believing that perseverance, continuous personal growth, and dedication to one's passions are the wisest paths in life. Author of the book "Strong Women of Japan" (>>see more)

Personal motto:

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." - Albert Einstein (probably)

Mike Soray

(aka Michał Sobieraj)

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