I know I’ve written about this before, and yet it remains true: I travel almost as much for the scenery and social observations as I do for the food. Though I am not a foodie, I find myself yearning to return to places where I know I can have several really good meals.

My mornings in Osaka are settling into a nice routine. I wake after what is usually another restless night (not sure why, though), shower, get dressed, grab my computer and head down to Kanya Coffee, barely two minutes from our aparthotel.

If I’m lucky, and usually I am, there’s a corner seat at one end of the long couch that runs along the café. A couple of Japanese guests are almost always there already, working, drinking coffee and being super quiet.

Some may be students; a nursing and medical university is on a nearby side street leading toward Osaka Castle. Other regulars are middle-aged women in corporate outfits, their short hair neatly cut, laser focused on their laptop screens.

I don’t want to attach too much meaning to it, but on a few mornings, despite plenty of empty seats, people have chosen places nearer to me than I would have chosen had the situation been reversed.

I’m not particularly social in the morning, at least not until the day’s first caffeine hit kicks in. But it’s not as disturbing as it may sound. I doubt my fellow guests are making a shy gesture. They are likely just more comfortable without quite so much social distance.

This country is, after all, densely populated. Or perhaps I’m a foreigner trying to turn Japanese seating preferences into a quasi-anthropological study.

The breakfast I order is close to what I ate in Fukuoka, where I had one of the best I can remember. Here it’s a big wooden plate with scrambled eggs, rather than the sunny-side-up eggs I got in Fukuoka and prefer, a few lean pieces of bacon, a small salad, a bowl of yoghurt and two thick slices of toasted, buttered bread.

Speaking of Fukuoka…that city will always hold a painful distinction for me: Allan’s health was rapidly deteriorating, and Charlotte’s severe influenza sent us both to a local hospital, where she was well cared for and discharged after about an hour. It was our first, and hopefully last, ambulance ride.

Most meals in Japan cost between a third and a half of what I’d pay in Sweden, and perhaps a fifth of what I’d pay in the United States, even before the absurd doctrine of tipping is added.

Now that we’re once again staying in an aparthotel, I’m spending quite a lot on breakfast: on average, about SEK 100 or 10 bucks. But I’m happy to do so, as I know I’m paying for something far more satisfying than anything I could possibly get for the same amount back home. The comparison would actually be ridiculous.

As usual, none of our meals in Japan have disappointed me. Last night’s dinner at Siesta, our favorite tiny, Japanese-inflected Tex-Mex place in Kyoto, was no exception.

We took the train from Osaka to Kyoto beneath a clear blue November sky. Once there, Charlotte and I went our separate ways for a while, then met again at Kyoto’s coolest vinyl bar Good Morning Record Bar for a cold brewski before heading to Siesta.

Sometimes disappointment is inevitable when you return to an old favorite place only to find it changed beyond recognition. Good Morning Record Bar and Siesta were much as we remembered them from last fall. I don’t even think they’d raised their prices and the relaxed vibe was still there.

It was my turn to pay for dinner. After converting from yen to SEK, the bill at Siesta came to SEK 322, about USD 33, for two bottled beers, two shots of good tequila (6 cl), two huge fish burritos and a small bowl of delicious guacamole with homemade tortilla chips.

During the evening, Charlotte and I talked about Allan and the humor he had, even as his dementia progressed.

At Villa Höjden in Högsbohöjd, the heated discussions around the dining table could sometimes feel like scenes from Gökboet – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Allan reminded me of McMurphy, stirring things up and trying to steer the others.

His humor grew more twisted and provocative as the dementia increased. I don’t know whether he knew how funny he was, but I want to believe he did.

Lying in bed back home, I often find myself longing for places like Siesta, where Charlotte and I have had several memorable meals that gave us a kind of culinary euphoria.

Sometimes I wonder whether my food addiction has a less romantic origin. My brother Tyko and I often went to bed hungry because our mother was too drunk or too indifferent to make us dinner. An old hunger, it seems, can have a long memory.

As I write this, an elderly Japanese gentleman in a grey suit is talking loudly on his phone at the other end of the café. He’s doing so in open defiance of the little sticker on every table asking customers not to talk on their phones.

He appears to have mistaken the notice for decoration, or perhaps he’s just forgotten his glasses.

I’m probably overreacting to the written and unwritten rules here. That said, they inspire me to behave better, to be a better person – as my Thai buddy Saran once put it when I asked him how he felt his life was turning out.

The wish to do better, inspired by example, feels like a far more persuasive form of social discipline than any lecture or rulebook: the quietness of people sharing a space with respect for each other.

We have less than a week before we leave Northeast Asia’s agreeable autumn weather and head southwest for a few days before returning to Scandinavia’s cold, dark dreariness.

I’m all right with that.

We have much to look forward to. First, giving Allan the send-off he deserves. Then, in February, our first move in almost seventeen years. Whoa!