So my friend Takahide emailed me the other day. It turned out that he had traveled from his home in Tokyo, Japan to come to San Francisco for a business convention here at San Francisco's Moscone Center. I hadn't heard from Takahide in years. We had met in September of 1997 in Washington, DC. I remember the month and year because it was directly after I broke up with my ex-boyfriend. We met at our gym and ended up having a quick dinner afterwards and bonded quickly as he was also going through a breakup; therefore we had much to discuss. We weren't exactly similar except that we both were going through hard times and we offered each other an ear for many an hour over the next few months. He really helped during that period of my life-- someone new who could listen and console. He left DC in '98 and I left in '99.

It's so interesting talking to people who live in completely different worlds from yourself. Life in Japan sounds so crazy, at least to me. Takahide talks of constant work-- everybody works 9am-9pm with no rest for anything-- and needs for 'success' and talks about pressures to marry and have children and be a 'good' member of society and whatnot. And Gay life in Japan, even in the big city of Tokyo, sounds so closed and depressing. He loved seeing the openness of San Francisco, and well, so do I when I remember that San Francisco is like an oasis in America and the rest of the world for Gay people to be out and open. I really should travel more around the world and see life through other eyes and visit other cultures and hear other ideas, but when you live in an oasis, it's hard to think about visiting new areas of the dry desert from which you escaped.