Just in time for my appointment at the Embassy. Nice to have this small piece of your home country when you’re abroad. We have about an hour, because then the Earthquake Simulation Vehicle will arrive. They will learn what to do when the ground starts shaking. Get some good leads and hook-ups from Bas San. The great Embassy guy. When I leave the Simulation Vehicle enters. No time to learn about Earthquakes, I have to catch a bus.

This morning when packing my bag I thought about good ways to fold a shirt. As I received inadequate education on that. Now, riding on the metro, a commercial on the screen is showing ways to fold shirts. They have a two step technique in which the shirt is manipulated perfectly into it’s folded being. The moment I see it I know I will forget it. I write down a note ‘You are always somewhere’. So you are never really lost.

Love the ‘coming out of a tunnel’ moment. First this little glimpse of light becoming brighter and brighter. Then POW, a new view. Eyes focus from 3 meters in front to hundreds. Cheap thrills. As the bus moves farther away from the big city I get my first sight of mount Fuji. This holy mountain. Big nipple rising from the ground. Lush here. The beauty of a curve in a steep asphalt road surrounded by green trees. A girl films the entire bus ride from the front seat. No pause.

The bus drops me off next to a lake, at the tiniest village in the middle of nowhere. Walk towards the place I’m staying, where I am greeted by Machiko and her cat. I find out she is a yoga practitioner. It appears we own the same obscure book about yoga, which I got from my yoga teacher. She explains she studied Yoga in India. And I tell her about the stone I’m carrying. She says a good place in India to bless the stone would be at Tiruvannaamalai, An ashram place founded by Sri Ramana Maharshi. She has been there. I know about this person, because I know two texts he wrote. She tells me India has to call you. The phone rings.

My belly is upset. Out at the lake I see two deer drinking. I get a message from my aunt, who lives in France, She sends me ‘You are always somewhere’.