taichi's visit/back to southeast asia

Sometimes the consideration that people show each other here can hit you and make you feel so lucky to live in a country where going out of your way to help someone is the norm. That happened to me today and I came home feeling really positive after my bike ride home. Though, when this happens, I wonder how well I'll adjust in the future to living somewhere where people aren't as nice as they are in rural Japan.

I spent most of the day reading about Malaysia and Indonesia as the other teachers asked me questions about why I chose to go there during the break. Later on at the grocery store I saw a student who witnessed me shopping for tonight's dinner. I seriously thought that she was going to faint when I tapped her on the shoulder to say hello.

This past weekend my friend Taichi, who lives in Pittsburgh but is spending a month in Osaka to visit his family, came to Naruto to hang out. We walked around the farms in my neighborhood, talked about music, ate good food, visited Shinto shrines by my apartment...it was a good time for an impromptu hangout like this.



So on Friday it's back to Southeast Asia for three weeks. Here's the flight schedule so far (and probably more to come)-

Osaka to Singapore
Singapore to Kota Kinabalu (Borneo)
Kota Kinabalu to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)
Kuala Lumpur to Denpasar (Bali, Indonesia)
Denpasar to Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur to Singapore
Singapore to Osaka

It actually hit me that I'll be in Southeast Asia once again as I read about the coffee that people drink in Borneo. Nothing but condensed milk is used as a sweetener and if there is anything that will forever remind me of a particular three days sleeping in tree houses deep in the Laotian jungle, it is coffee with mixed with way too much condensed milk...