Japan,

Prelude My grandfather was an incredibly disciplined man, a teetotaler and vegetarian. Traveling as a vegetarian is a painful thing. It still is, but it must have been worse in the 60s. And yet he travelled quite a bit in his day. One of his such trips was to Japan. I think it was Tokyo or Osaka, but I don't recollect too well now. There were a few stories of his that stuck with me: one was about how difficult it was to get decent food - if you were a vegetarian, they understood you to be a herbivore and usually only had raw fruits and vegetables. He didn't think it was discriminative - rather, they didn't cook anything without an element of fish or meat in it, so this was the only option. The other was about how punctual and polite people acutally were. Many of those stories ended up creating a desire to try and live in Japan for a couple of years. While I am not sure if I will do that yet, my trip to Japan was a fantastic opportunity to experience this wonderful place. ...