16.04.10  friends

This has been our second weekend back in Japan after India.  On Friday night we went for dinner at
Scampi’s (Italian) with Rhoda and Phil.  Rhoda had just returned from China and we hadn’t seen her
in a month.  Phil was hosting his sister, but she couldn’t join us as she needed to pack for her departure
back to the U.S. the following day.  After dinner we went for coffee at Denny’s where Takeshi met up
with us.

On Saturday, Rod and I spent the day cleaning the apartment and ate sushi lunch at “kaitenzushi”.
In the evening, Phil’s going-away party was held. Good byes are so hard this time around…
I guess because we’ll be doing it ourselves soon enough.  But I guess it is a small world after all
as we’ve been able to see Nikita all the way in India.  Surely Phil in Philly will be a possibility,
and Jenni in Chicago.

Admittedly when I first came to Japan I was reticent to cultivate all these international friendships
because I simply thought they would dissolve the moment one of us boarded that plane.
Little did I know that Rod and I would end up staying in Japan for three years and that we would
even meet a number of people from Canada and the northern U.S., and that we would go to India,
and eventually to Europe.

Making friends is never a waste of time.