The weekly grief is a literary letter from Tokyo, written by me, Thu-Huong Ha. I write essays, criticism, features, and fiction, and I am currently the culture critic for The Japan Times. Here I am on instagram.
Despite the title, this newsletter is not sent weekly. This year, it’s sent every 31st. (In 2022, it was sent biweekly; in 2023, once per season; in 2024, on every new moon.)
Most posts are free, but grief takes time and energy. If you can, support my work with a paid subscription. In return, you'll receive small batch grief, high quality experimental sadness for a smaller audience.
Themes include: mountains and weather; language learning; expatriation; seasons and change; locating the normal in cultural oddities and finding the odd in cultural norms; moving, seeking, losing; real and imaginary places.
If any of these appeal to you, please subscribe. Don’t miss a grief.
“And then, from there, it was possible, unavoidable really, to listen to the storm going around and around, and I knew it was an old one that had come back—it seemed to know exactly where it was and there was such intimacy in its movement and in the sound it made as it went along and around and around. Yes, I thought, you know these mountains and the mountains are familiar with you also.” — Claire-Louise Bennett, Pond
“My current concerns were, needless to say, all about cracker packets.” — Kikuko Tsumura, There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job
