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Visiting a Japanese Tea Farm
I wake up in Capsule Inn Osaka, the world’s first capsule hotel. I expected it to be more of a novelty, but its tiny size mimics my RV so closely that it’s the most familiar place I’ve slept all month. I’m in the middle of my 7 day unlimited train pass, so there’s no time…
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Japan Summer 2011 – Part 1
There’s so much I can write about my trip to Japan that just attempting to start this post has been too daunting to make its way into my schedule since I left. Now that I’ve been out of the country for a week, though, I realize that putting it off any longer might mean that…
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Literal Self Discipline
Two days into my trip to Tokyo, I sign on to Facebook and go to see if it’s my move in Words With Friends. I like WWF because it takes up minimal time, seems to actually be good for the brain, and keeps me in touch with some friends I wouldn’t otherwise regularly communicate with.…
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Advice For Young People
I was at a party earlier tonight, talking to a guy who had lived in rural China for a while. The girls there, he told me, were naturally very beautiful, but didn’t take care of their hair or skin. All I could think was what a huge opportunity existed for those girls: be the one…
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Pu-erh Tea in Shanghai
Cigarette smoke washes over from the table next to me, where two old Chinese men sip oolong tea from gaiwans. I hate smoke, but don’t mind it today. If we try to replicate our local culture when we travel, we end up with the cookie-cutter resorts of the Caribbean, each with American-style buffets, locals who…
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Two Strikes and You’re Back Into Pickup
Becoming disappointed in yourself is a unique region in the realm of disappointment, because no amount of time and understanding makes it go away. The only remedy for it is to change yourself– in fact, this is one of the best sources of motivation for self-improvement. I’ve recently become disappointed in my self, illustrated by…
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The Isolation
A couple days ago a guy named Sebastian Marshall wrote an excellent post called, “The Million Dollar Question“. It spoke to me in a way that blog posts rarely do, and prompted me to write this post. In the post, Sebastian is sitting by a train station, watching normal people go by, happily executing their…
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What a Wonderful World
The market is tanking, we’re treading water in expensive wars, unemployment is high, people are eating garbage, school is failing us, our government is dysfunctional, pollution is rampant, kids are hooked on drugs, and our prisons are packed. Many things are going horribly wrong with this world, and I’d even say that some metrics we…
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The Order In Which I’d Tackle Life
Just as there are a million ways to drive from Los Angeles to New York, there are a million ways to get from where you are now in life to where you want to be. But, like the road trip, some ways are better than others. As I’ve tackled different problems in my life and…
