As I walked, I marveled at how something like this can exist in the world.* I grew up in NYC. People from my hood would laugh at things like this. And then take the tin box. And the oranges. And the friggin' table. My buddy Ric just told me that a friend of his -- a visitor from Japan -- absentmindedly left her purse in the restroom of a restaurant for a few minutes. When she realized her mistake and went back to retrieve it, it was already gone. Along with money and her passport. Yeah, I know. Providing one anecdote to prove my point is lame. But you get my drift, right? Why can't oranges on tables in the rain exist in Brooklyn? Or the Sunset?
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In other news, the final box from San Francisco was opened and emptied today. We managed to fit all the stuff into our place. The bookcase that I found on the curb helped a lot. Free furniture is always helpful.
On the other hand, this one didn't help with the unpacking at all:
* At the exact moment that I was marveling, I was also thinking that I wasn't surprised. This was Japan after all. You lose your wallet on the bus here and it will make its way back to you; this happened to a friend of mine.
It was a weird collision of feelings -- a sense of amazement and, at the same time, actually thinking that this is how things work here and you know this is how things work here and yes, I expect things to work here this way.
As you finally complete the move-in stage of your new Japan life, I finally complete the move-out phase of my old Taiwan life. I write this to you from my parents' house in Orange County. The trip sucked, and Alliya and I won't see each other for two weeks (she's gone up north), but I can finally just slow myself down to the pace I'm used to, and just relax. It's too bad our ships passed each other in the fog of the night, but I'll be back, either that or you'll be back, and we will be able to hang out again in the near future.
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