I’ve been consumed in the last week with researching what to see, smell, and taste in Japan for our upcoming trip in July. I began by researching the history and sights of Hiroshima, then Kyoto, and now Tokyo and the surrounds. I suppose I left Tokyo to the end because I knew how overwhelming it would be. It’s a massive city with a population of over 36.9 million, which is almost double the population of New York City, the biggest city in the U.S. It’s famed for its high energy, fusion of the modern and the traditional, and endless eateries. Robot restaurants, rice cookers with 20 different settings, women with mile-long fake eyelashes, and matcha green tea-flavored everything abound.

Five years ago, Tokyo surpassed Paris for having the most number of Michelin-star rated restaurants in the world, which is pretty impressive given a lot of these restaurants are random no-ambiance sushi restaurants that don’t necessarily live up to the stereotypical image of the “ideal” in French culture. So when it comes to doing research on what and where to eat, it’s an endless list on every food blog and news site on what’s considered the best and what’s worth waiting for at multiple price points. To make matters more complicated, not all restaurants’ Romanized names are written on their store fronts, so I have to create a guide with both the Japanese name Romanized and the Japanese characters. And because of how large Japan is, we need to organize restaurants by location/neighborhood and food type.

I don’t think I’ve ever planned a trip where I was more overwhelmed by all the options that faced me. I guess I could have felt that way about cities like Shanghai and Paris, which have endless things to see and do, but for some reason, because I’ve been wanting to go to Tokyo for so long, especially after a failed planned trip when I was 21, that all the hype and energy has accumulated to a point where I want to make sure I see and do as much is humanly possible during my first trip there without not sleeping. 🙂

In the U.S., it generally costs more to buy fresh produce than it does to buy processed (yet filling) meals, such as a box of Kraft instant macaroni and cheese, a Cup-of-Noodle, or something else that is not particularly healthy for you. It’s part of the reason poor people tend to have worse diets and be more obese — they don’t have enough money to buy what’s good for them, so they go for what’s cheap and filling because they don’t want to starve to death.

In other countries, the costs tend to be more on par or even cheaper. I remember walking around food markets in many other places around the world and marveling over how cheap their produce was. Food in large grocery stores tended to be more expensive than at these markets. With skincare, as I am researching things to buy in Japan for our upcoming trip, skincare that is of a certain quality is relatively so cheap there compared to here. A bottle of equivalent quality cleansing oil that costs about $30 here costs $8-10 there. A $4 mascara in Tokyo would probably cost somewhere between $15-20 here.

The way I look at this is, perhaps if a society values something more and looks at it as vital, then maybe that’s why it’s more reachable in terms of affordability. If we absolutely must have fresh fruit and vegetables, it should be more affordable, right? The same should go for good skincare (sunblock, face creams). The more expensive they are, the more out of reach, and thus fewer people will buy them. If this is true, then I’d think the U.S. just doesn’t value good diet and health (via quality of skin and body through skincare regimen), which would be quite sad.

We’re spending the long weekend in Ohio and Kentucky this Memorial Day weekend with Chris’s parents. They’ve never visited either state, so we started our day in Cincinnati at the Findlay Market, which is one of the oldest public markets in the country. It was a really fun setup that reminded me a bit of the markets we’ve seen in West Virginia, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. As we’re walking through one of the markets and stop to try some cheese spreads from a vendor who owns a restaurant in Kentucky, the man makes some polite chit chat with us and asks where we are from. I tell him that Chris and I live in New York City, but his parents are visiting from Australia, so we decided to spend the long weekend in Ohio and Kentucky. He gives me a very puzzled look, and he says as he gives a little laugh, “I’m not trying to be rude, but why in the world are you here?” He elaborates that he’s confused as to why people who are visiting the U.S. from Australia would want to visit states like Ohio and Kentucky; he’d think that people from such an interesting country (“interesting” for Australia is debatable) would want to visit the more popular and well known states, like California or New York. And for Chris and me, how did we even think about flying to Cincinnati of all cities to visit? I tell the man that we are trying to see as much of the country as possible and see what everyone has to offer. I also let him know that we’re doing our second day trip to Kentucky tomorrow. He smiles and says he likes my attitude and that he hopes we enjoy our time in his town.

The man was clearly being modest, but maybe he just doesn’t know what makes his home town so great. Maybe no one really gets why anyone would want to visit their relatively small home town. But I still believe every place has something special about it. Maybe everyone in these ‘smaller town’ areas needs to have a little bit more pride about where they are from. I’d be so irritated all the time if I had to say things like, “Why would you want to visit (where I am now that I represent)? Don’t you want to visit (insert some other glitzy, bigger city nearby)?” It’d be as though I have little self worth.

I’m starting to do research for our upcoming long Memorial Day weekend in Ohio and Kentucky. Chris, his parents, and I will be based in Cincinnati and are planning to explore the surrounds, and drive down to Lexington and explore the Kentucky Derby land. Because Memorial Day is quickly approaching, everyone at work is asking what everyone else is doing for the long weekend. It’s funny to share that I’m going to Ohio and Kentucky for the long weekend with people who are living and working in New York because the majority of people here seem to think those states are not worth visiting. And when they hear we are flying there and not driving, they think we are even crazier to pay for airfare to get to these places.

I’m almost like a Middle America person when I say this, but I just find these comments really frustrating. I grew up in California, went to school in Massachusetts, and now work and live in New York, all three of which are considered good places to visit, study, work, and live, but I’ve always wanted to explore states of the country that are far less traveled to. It’s the optimist in me, but I think there is something great about pretty much every place in the world and in this country. I don’t want to be the snob or ignoramus who thinks that there’s nothing to see in Ohio or Kentucky or Idaho, especially if I have never even visited these areas. Who am I to even make that judgment? The overwhelming assumption there when a person makes a comment like that is that she thinks she’s superior to these places, which is pretty pig-headed to me. People willingly choose to live and work in all of these places, so there has to be something that they get pleasure from in these cities and states.

A friend of mine had the argument that time is limited in life, so why would you want to visit places that don’t have known things to see to the average person? I think that argument should be reframed as, you should want to see and visit the places that interest you as a person, not you as one of a massive group of generic people. Few people would say that there is nothing to see in Paris, but many would argue that is true for a city like Cleveland. As someone who really enjoyed the time she spent in Cleveland, I would argue it’s a place worth seeing for me.

When I first started speaking at the late little age of around 2, I spoke a mix of English and Toisan at the same time. Everyone spoke to me in both, but my grandma, my dad’s mother, only knew Toisan, so that’s the language we spoke together. One of the first things she said about me as I was growing was, in Toisan, “That girl doesn’t eat!” I don’t really speak Toisan anymore since she died in 1995, but I can understand basic everyday conversation, and sadly, this is one phrase I can still hear ringing in my head in her voice as though she were standing in front of me yelling it. When I was young, I rarely finished my plate or bowl of food. I was the kid who picked at the food and always said I wasn’t hungry or was full. They used to force feed me because they thought I was too skinny.

My dad loves to remind me this, and I always hate it. He loves to say that I still don’t have much of an appetite, and he especially loves commenting when I’m about half way done with a meal when out, and asks if I will be at the restaurant until midnight to finish my food. In my family, no food should go to waste. There shouldn’t even be half a bite of food on your plate when you are done because then you are just a spoiled child who doesn’t even know what it’s like to go hungry through a night or not have enough dinner to eat. The irony here is that my parents tend to always over buy and cook too much food, so a lot in the end gets thrown out by them. I suppose this is the classic situation of, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

I thought about this because this situation’s already happened twice during this trip, and if it happened once more, I probably would have ended up snapping at him. No one should be eating the full portions you get in these Westernized restaurants, and if you are eating it all, it very likely isn’t that good for you. He doesn’t get that, though.

My mother has been clutching her big hand bag the last two days of this trip, and it’s been driving me crazy. It’s a big purse with long handles, and I have no idea what the heck a little person like her does with such a big bag (she’s only 4 feet 8 inches tall, and perhaps even shorter now since as we get older, we tend to shrink). I know for a fact she’s got a lot of cash in that bag since she never carries credit cards and is on vacation, but she’s not even letting the bag dangle on her shoulder as she should. She’s holding it like a baby with both arms everywhere — on the ferry, all over Butchart Gardens, and then at Granville Island Public Market. She looks like a nervous wreck.

In the last two years, my mother has become even more distrusting, paranoid, nervous, and negative about the world. Part of it is because about two years ago was the point when Ed’s life started escalating in a negative direction, which ultimately led to his tragic suicide. Since then, my mother’s smile in photos has changed drastically. It changed a lot for the first time when he got into legal trouble in May 2000, and then for a second time in 2013 when we lost him forever. Now, her attempt at a smile is like a mix of a confused, shocked, hardened stare, one that would be completely quizzical to those who know nothing about her. “Smile!” we say in photos, and her confused stare is the result.

It’s sad to see her like this, to see what her hard life has done to her and how she has responded to the many circumstances she has faced. Part of it I’m positive is because she herself has a mental illness that just has not been properly addressed, mostly out of her own choice, but we can’t do anything about that in our society since she is an adult who needs to make her own decisions. When I look at the photos of her confused frown or see her clutching her bag as though it’s her life, it breaks my heart a little because I know there’s really nothing I can do to help her be more at ease and actually enjoy life.

My dad’s turning 67 this year, and I’ve finally managed to haul him over the border to Canada for the first time in his life. My mom has been in the U.S. since 1972, so that’s 45 years of living in the U.S. also without ever stepping foot into Canada. In general, my parents don’t travel and dislike it, particularly because they hate being out of their comfort zones, possess no curiosity of the world, and because of the poor conditions in which they grew up, tend to think that only “rich people” travel. Last year, Chris and I took them to Phoenix and the Grand Canyon, and this year, we’ve decided to take them to Vancouver. It seems to have everything my parents like — fairly temperate weather, a Western environment, and lots of Asians everywhere.

So far, other than the bit of rain we’ve experienced (well, we are in Vancouver after all), the trip has been going pretty well. My dad as per usual gets bored very easily, so he’s constantly asking what we are doing and where we are going next. They’ve also been stubborn about getting a debit card that allows them to withdraw money in a foreign country without a transaction fee, so they are constantly asking me where they can exchange cash. My mom asks me two or three times if I’m sure that they don’t accept U.S. dollars here. Nope, they don’t. Canada isn’t like Cambodia, where they don’t value their own currency and prefer U.S. dollars and coins. We’re encountering all the questions and frustrations with my parents just as I predicted. That’s how predictable my parents are.

After my client meeting this afternoon, my colleagues and I decided to ask our Uber driver to stop by the nearest Publix supermarket so that the three of us could grab their famous subs before heading to the airport. I got my much coveted roast beef and provolone sub sandwich, and because we so conveniently hit traffic, I got to the airport with only 20 minutes to spare before boarding was to begin. And lucky me, the Fort Lauderdale airport so conveniently decided to close the TSA pre-check line 40 minutes before I got there (“due to peak period being over”), so I had to get in the regular line. The only consolation I got was that I didn’t have to remove my jacket and shoes. I still had to take out my laptop.

What is the point of paying for TSA pre-check when these TSA agents arbitrarily decide to close the TSA pre-check line whenever they feel like it? I get that FLL is not a major airport, but they can’t just shut this down when there are customers who actually paid money for this speedy access. What else do they do all day, anyway? They clearly don’t do their jobs since I’ve gotten past security in the regular lines not just without taking out my liquids, but even with a bottle that was over 3 ounces large. Got to love their thought process.

I ended up getting through security 10 minutes before boarding time. What a mad dash – the crazy lone Asian girl running through the airport that has little to no Asians in it.