Day 34: Saku
(09/01/06)

So Saku really is a dump of a town. Thanks to numerous recent town mergers there is nothing but sprawl for miles. Like an oversized suburb, the shopping mall is the closest thing there is to a town center. After some wandering, I at least found a good bakery where I spent three hours munching on bread, downing coffee, and writing.

In the evening, I headed back to Usuda-machi (once a little town, now part of the Saku-beast) to meet Chay and some of his former coworkers for dinner and drinks. The restaurant was filled with people he knew, though most were at two separate parties that happened to be going on that night. I ended up chatting with a woman at one of them. We talked about family and I learned that her husband's mother died when he was young and his father died when he was seventeen. Since they met after that, she never knew his parents.

She also asked about my goal of being a professional writer and photographer, making the good point that "well, you're only twenty seven. Even if it takes you ten years to get there, you'll still be young." Good perspective to have. Hopefully I can keep that in mind and stop spinning my wheels over distractions and the thought that I should be doing something more practical and easily achievable. I've certainly wasted enough time and energy over paths that seem logical but aren't right for me.