"Starting over" is the concept which I don't subscribe to because I believe life is a something continuous. But there was one time I felt I needed to start over entirely from scratch. November 7th, 2008: Brooklyn, New York. I arrived at JFK Airport the day before and settled in a hostel in Bed-Stuy. I …
Ten years ago today, I was at the airport waiting for my flight to New York. I was alone. It was a beginning of my real life, in the sense that I was not following anybody else's. Surely I have taken some big decisions before... like which course to study at university, or what kind of …
I don’t know much about my uncle. Because he led a very secluded life for nearly 40 years. According to my grandmother, my uncle was what people called “prodigy”. From a young age, he excelled academically. He went to the most prestigious university in Japan, and he continued his studies to become a science researcher. …
Walking My Neighborhood On a sunny autumn afternoon, I walked around the town where I grew up. I started off from a train station. I used to run to the platform to catch a train to my senior high school. I passed a railway crossing, and walked to my elementary school. For six years, the …
I like literature, but sometimes I get doubtful about the meaning of literature as well. Because oftentimes it doesn't help people to get through the hardest time of their lives. I had a friend from the university called Yori. We were in the same drama club during my sophomore year. From the surface point of …
It was 2014. I was living in Melbourne. It was a cold spring night, and I was looking up the moon from the doorway of my house. It was my first time to see a total lunar eclipse. The moon was going wane. Well, at least it looked so to my eyes. Honestly, I couldn’t tell …
My grandfather, my father side, was, what you would call, a self-made man. He was an Air Force mechanic at WWII. After returning from the war, he started a small engineering workshop in Osaka, and expanded it to a mechatronics manufacturing company. He was an austere man, people said. He was stern, forbidding, and critical. He was …
I remember a girl I met in Melbourne, Australia back in October 2014. I was coming out of the State Library. There was a small gathering at the forecourt. A few girls in their 20s, apparently students, were giving something away to people. "Hello, please take a candy." She handed me a small bag of …
I am a human. I am not an angel. I am trying not to be judgemental, but sometimes I make mistakes. Like I did today. "Dad and I are going out for a dinner tonight," I was talking with mom over the phone. "Oh, that's nice. Where are you two going?" She asked. "Well, you …
"You only live once", people say. But that phrase really got me when I was traveling in Vietnam. It was back in 2003. I was traveling the Southeast Asia by myself, and I joined a local tour to go to Mekong Delta. I don't remember where it exactly was. It was back in the day …
A Thousand Years 