One of the best life experiences we had was finding dinner in Kyoto after dark. Pretty much everything was closed except this old couples restaurant and n the ground floor of their house. By restaurant, I mean like eight chairs. They spoke zero English, but there were only two meals on the menu. The guy walked us out front and showed us the plastic versions in the window (super common in Japan). We each picked #1 or #2 and went back inside. We were the only ones there, so he and he wife talked in Japanese to each other and my and I talked English to each other. Communication was a lot of nods and my broken ass Japanese. The food was great and it felt like we bonded with them even though we couldn't really communicate. I tell the story a few times a year, even though that was 12 years ago.
If you can do anything with Buddhist monks DO IT. They can teach you a lot about being present just by observing them.
If you can do anything with Buddhist monks DO IT. They can teach you a lot about being present just by observing them.
'76 911S | '14 328xi | '17 GTI | In memoriam: '08 848, '85 944
"Here, at last, is the cure for texting while driving. The millions of deaths which occur every year due to the iPhone’s ability to stream the Kim K/Ray-J video in 4G could all be avoided, every last one of them, if the government issued everyone a Seventies 911 and made sure they always left the house five minutes later than they’d wanted to. It would help if it could be made to rain as well. Full attention on the road. Guaranteed." -Jack Baruth
"Here, at last, is the cure for texting while driving. The millions of deaths which occur every year due to the iPhone’s ability to stream the Kim K/Ray-J video in 4G could all be avoided, every last one of them, if the government issued everyone a Seventies 911 and made sure they always left the house five minutes later than they’d wanted to. It would help if it could be made to rain as well. Full attention on the road. Guaranteed." -Jack Baruth