I want to write about the person I met in Singapore, but I hardly remember him — Because it was 21 years ago and I was 21 years old. I was at a transit counter of Singapore Airlines in Changi Airport. My flight schedule allowed me to join a free sightseeing tour in the city, …
Can a cool kid and an uncool kid be friends? I met Laurie on my way to Thailand. We were sitting next to each other on the bus from Siem Reap to Bangkok. She was 25 years old from Australia. She had a nose piercing and lots of beaded and braided bracelets. I had a …
“Hey, that’s Angkor Wat”. My bike-taxi driver pointed out a dark grey chunk of rocks standing among the tree. Having spent several days earlier in Southeast Asia, I got used to riding a motorcycle. However, keeping my body in a right position on a rear seat of an old scooter in the darkness before dawn …
On a late-summer day in 2003, I was humming on a boat. There were several routes to Siem Reap from Phnom Penn, and I took a speed ferry across the lake Tonlé Sap. There were many shacks on the water. I remembered the encyclopedia I had seen in a library in my elementary school; the …
“I wanna go somewhere.“ It was the summer of 2003. I was in my junior year at university. I have never travelled overseas alone, and I thought it was the time to go. That urge was strong. It felt as if I were a plant that needed to be repotted. If it is kept in …
No, it’s not “PayPal” - It’s “pen pal”. It is probably the word becoming so obsolete nowadays that my MacBook thought it needed to be autocorrected as I started to write this story. However, the word “pen pal” has been more common than PayPal back in 1998. In July 1998, I set off to Malaysia …
"How old are you?", the waiter asked. I was at a hotel restaurant in Oahu with my parents. I knew how to count the number from one to ten in English, but I had to count up from number one to get to my age -- a long journey to number nine. Feeling fretted, I …
Thank you for coming to the very first Theatre Game meetup I set up in Sydney. I was worried that few people would show up but the way you seemed to enjoy the experience was the reassurance I needed. And then you took over that meet up group and it grew and grew. It is …
"What is your name?" I had difficulty answering that question for a long time. My parents divorced when I was 12 years old. Back in 1994, divorce in Japan was not so common among middle-class families. In my class, I was the only child from divorced parents. In any case, my parents’ separation was not …
I wake up, pour hot water into a cup, open a window in my apartment and meditate. It has been a challenging 25 months. It's hard to keep my emotions in check. When a storm hits a mountain, the exposed, vulnerable trees fall first. Being on my own makes me vulnerable, just like one of …
A Thousand Years 