otherness.

I was just over at Astronaut Ambition and read another wonderful post about Asia (this time it's Japan). Thought you might like it as well, so let me blatantly copy a few lines:

For three weeks I have been hanging out in sleepy Shimodate doing nothing but renting dvds, sending emails, and taking walks. I have no desire to be doing the same in Canada, and every desire to keep doing it here.

They say Japan isn't real; it is a break from everything and everyone you ever knew. What happens here is on a different track from what happened back home. For James, that means becoming the more relaxed and daring person he always knew he secretly was. For Tanya, Japan is a safe haven of incommunication from everything that didn't please her in Canada.

I travelled around the world to escape despair. Almost every night I sit in a red-lit room watching movies with James and Tanya, resurrecting an old friendship and building a new one, and I am happy. Doing nothing in Japan is still more than I was doing back home.