Uncle’s Diary · told by Boomer · 2 minutes · The origin story — where the whole journey began
Uncle’s family is from Hawaii — saimin country. You can even buy Okinawan soba in the grocery stores back home. But the original can never be duplicated: the water, the flour, the humidity in the air. Okinawa is Okinawa, and nowhere else can be.
He learned that last year, on what I call his appetizer tour — 10 weeks, 10 cities, Japan down to Thailand. (Okinawa, Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Hanoi, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai — since you asked.) Week one, tourist. Week four, the soba lady in Naha knew his order. Week ten, leaving felt like moving out, not checking out.
That’s when it clicked: he’d been traveling wrong his whole life. Fast trips show you the postcard. Slow trips show you the price of eggs, the quiet alley, which pharmacy has the good pharmacist.
The appetizer’s gone. Now he’s ordering the full course. March 2027, one-way, 14 months — home only when it’s time to see his doctors, then right back out.
The 53 cities we track on this site? He’s retracing his own footsteps — this time with a research department that never sleeps. And me. Mostly me.
Previous diary entry: My AI Rewrote My Website While I Slept.