Back on Schedule

A week ago I flew from Tokyo back to America, and last Saturday I finally returned to Colorado. Originally I had planned on resuming my normal publishing schedule yesterday, however when I looked at my current number of published writing pieces I realized that if I waited until today I could keep myself on the track that I was before departure, wherein every Friday post brings the total number of published posts to a number evenly divisible by five. Yes, I’m that obsessive about trivial things like that. Anyways, I’ve got a decent number of small stories related to my Asia trip. They should occupy the next two weeks of this website’s content, and maybe a little more if I think up more things worth sharing. Hopefully you enjoy them.

Sugar Toast

In addition to milk tea, the Japanese have introduced me to another culinary novelty that I call sugar toast. Well, actually, it might not be accurate to say that the Japanese as a whole have introduced me to it; I merely saw a Japanese guy sprinkle a little sugar on his toast one day. In any case, I was struck by the simple genius of sugar toast and ever since that day I've regularly been creating it myself when I have the opportunity. Granted, I'm probably applying more sugar than the average Japanese person, but let's not allow that fact to overshadow the expansion of my culinary horizons.

Milk Tea

While in Japan I developed an odd obsession with milk tea. I say that it's odd because milk tea isn't the greatest thing I've ever tasted but I kept finding myself buying it whenever I found a version/brand of milk tea that I hadn't tried yet. Right now I'm in Korea and milk tea isn't as common out here so my consumption has dramatically decreased. When I return to Tokyo in a few days, however, milk tea might make a brief comeback. There must be cocaine or something in milk tea, because I can't stop drinking it when it's available.

"Not many of you come out here."

You know you're in a place off the beaten trail when you're getting a lot of looks from the locals and the guy at the checkout area of the neighborhood grocery store tells you in shaky English that "Not many of you come out here."

Origami Crane

About ten days ago I was walking along when a little Japanese boy walked up and asked if he could interview me. This sort of thing had already happened to me several times in Japan, so I knew what was going to happen. Japanese kids across the country are gathering data from foreigners, I assume for either an innocent school project or nefarious government monitoring, asking basic questions like where people are from and why they came to Japan. I answered his questions, but at the end something different happened that had not happened before that time, and has not been repeated since. He gave me a small origami crane as a token gift for helping him complete his task. It's not a particularly special origami crane, but today I realized that I've been carrying it around with me ever since that day. By all measures I ought to leave it behind somewhere, or just dispose of it. For whatever reason, I've kept it with me and can't bring myself to trash the little thing.

What the heck are you carrying?

There is a great evil I have observed under the sun, and it weighs heavily on my fellow gaijin. I have seen far too many travelers carrying an absurd amount of cargo on their journey. A common sight is that of a person wearing a large backpack on their back and a smaller backpack on their front. As one who can go months on end with just a single medium-sized backpack, I sometimes want to walk up to my fellow gaijin and ask them what the heck they are carrying that requires so much cargo space. It doesn't make sense, and they're only making things harder on themselves.

"Sorry, I don't actually speak Japanese"

A major travel milestone was passed not too long ago. It was the sort of milestone that I didn't know existed until I passed it. When checking out of my hostel in Sapporo, I said "good morning" to the front desk person in Japanese. Apparently, my pronunciation was good enough that she assumed I spoke Japanese to me and proceeded to talk to me in Japanese. I immediately told her "Sorry, I don't actually speak Japanese" at which point she said "Oh," and then switched to English. As I left the hostel and started on my way to the Sapporo airport, realized what had just happened. I had fooled a Japanese person into thinking that I spoke Japanese. Check that one off the list of travel goals.