Tailwind  The huge farewell party at my Club was awash in champagne and good wishes. It was splendid.....now seeing only best of old friends, so feel that the tailwind has picked up.

     What is "a box"?  That is the same as asking "How long is a piece of string?" isn't it. One person told me she took back 80 boxes; a friend visiting recently told me he took back 175 boxes; a woman recently moved here said she brought 189 boxes. I have 18 boxes packed, 5 plastic tubs and 2 trunks.....glassware, pottery and pictures have to be packed, 3 boxes? Maybe 6 more boxes of books and pictures. The tansu will be "a box"? The small tea shelves will be "a box"; the long tall calligraphy will be "a box"? But what is "a box"? Anybody putting down bets on how many I will have in the end? 6.5 cubic meters is how much space it will all take up......one and a half futon closets.

    Documents sent off  Sent two kilograms of my life in documents via DHL for 9 thousand yen.....took a day to organize them, two and half hours to photocopy them and if I had had a mental picture of that from the beginning it all would have been less agonizing to worry about before the fact. Tokyo Hands has ziplocs for packing clothes for travel that fit A-4 documents exactly. Two of those, packed in a Post Office EMS envelope are enough ballast for the thin and skimpy DHL plastic sack-envelope.

 People ask "What is hard to leave?" It is like asking my mother where it hurts when she groans being got up in the morning. "Everywhere," she says; "Everything," I say.

Great idea: get a retractable line that hooks on to a belt and hook the "valuables" backpack and the computer carrier to it so as not to set them down alone in a moment of fatigue or confusion. Even put valuables in little sacks in a mesh vest  under the shirt. There are ways to get around not having insurance!

"So I believed in my feelings. The sense that ultimately our consciousness or our will or something like that ripples through our lives like waves, making things happen."
                                  --There is no Lid on the Sea
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Some good old Kobe friends...