i am sitting out on my balcony, listening to water trickle and kids whine and trains go clickety-clack over tracks that are three bridges away. i am sipping a california cabernet sauvignon, cheese and bread already long gone. if i didn't know i was in a foreign country, i could be fooled into thinking i was in southern california.

that's the weird thing about traveling: when you're not in one of those famous cities, seeing the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben or the Coliseum, it is easy to forget that you've left home at all. it really does all look the same, in the sense that you get used to being where you are and it becomes ordinary. i see the rice paddies and the canals and the mountains, day in and day out, and on my bike ride to City Hall or one of my schools I pass a community garden full of flowers, and then I see a cemetery, overflowing with headstones, each one of them adorned with a vase, and you can tell who has paid their respects to the ancestors recently and who hasn't based on the vitality of the bouquet. the sun doesn't set in the direction i expect it to; every evening at dusk i'm surprised when it goes down behind the mountains instead of the direction of the sea. still, every october i remember that i like this month's sunsets the best, and sunsets in japan do not disappoint.