Recent summer trip to Osaka in Japan

A quintessentially Japanese face
Last summer I had yet another chance to head across the sea to Japan, since it is only a one hour flight from Korea. I caught up with my friend Jun, there, and had a chance to experience all over again the old haunts from the time I lived here in '98. There's a lot I miss about Japan - the food, the politeness, the beautiful attention to detail and art, the language, but ultimately the ritualized behaviour, shyness of the people, and general expense of everything gets a bit overwhelming on a longterm basis. Koreans seem so much more pragmatic and straightforward by comparison, yet a yearning for something undefinable always lures me back to Japan.