Surprises are big and small when you live abroad.
I am not sure how obvious this is to most people, but something that intrigued me about Japan is how everyone I encountered seemed to be able to read the Latin Alphabet. Japanese people appear to read Latin characters, or in Japanese, “Romaji” (when he visited, my brother most eloquently asked “when you say Roman characters, you mean English, right?”) nearly on pace with native English speakers.
I apologize to my millions of faithful readers. My site is undergoing some ongoing (and sluggish) renovation and thus I’ve been unable to update it. But there’s no shortage of interesting experiences to report. Last weekend I took an overnight bus to the stunning city of Nagasaki.
Known for centuries as Japan’s Catholic refuge, to this day Nagasaki is sprawling with seaside churches, set against lush mountainous backdrops that look more like South America than the Orient.