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[joyceshoots]

Meet my best friend Tim. Japan was afterall, a little too small for him.

Since the first week I arrived at London life has always brought us together in the same environment. Doing the same major put us together in exactly the same courses at SOAS and drove us to choose Hitotsubashi for our year abroad, sharing the first three letters of our surnames always put us together in exams, and knowing this beautiful country it took us back once again after graduation. Over the past five years, there were fun times, study times, paranoid times, coffee times, ‘coffee’ (with quotation marks) times along the Thames, drunk (at ULU or Rocket) times, pep talk times, Noor times, Natura times, travoooool times... I still don’t really know how time without Tim would be like but as my favourite quotation goes: tim(e) is not ours. I know that you will shine even more and grow more than you could ever imagine in your new life. Good luck. All the best. Sayonara, love you.

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Meet Tim. I asked if he has to be careful not to hit his head on the handles on Japanese trains.

He said: Not just the hand straps. Door posts, ceilings, lamps, lamp hanging threads… the list goes on.

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8/7 There was something about the light that fell on her, who was sitting in a corner in Preah Khan. I understood nothing of her blessing (maybe it was a sort of prayer) she hymned as she tied strings of yellow and orange around my left wrist and swept away whatever evilness. In the end she lifted my hat and lightly blew on my forehead. I clasped by hands together in front of my chest and said thank you.

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8/5 Ta Prohm. Sella fills me in with facts about the Angkor everytime I returned to the car. He told me that the four-face towers at Angkor Thom symbolise compassion, charity, sympathy and equality; the three towers at Angkor Wat embody Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma. Ta Prohm was one of the monasteries where he walked me through; giant trees overgrow the once abandoned site built by Jayavarman VII for his mother in the late 12th century. Emptiness tinges - all the Buddhist narratives were destroyed by Hindu iconoclasts following the king’s death.

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8/7 After days of touring temples, my last afternoon was spent accompanying Sothea to fix the car tire (he suggested me to go shopping but I wasn’t as interested). Understanding no Khmer, I watched him and a young boy at the car repair shop investigate what was wrong with it as they examined several silver threads that sticked out from the black rubber. They came to a conclusion that he needed a new tire.

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8/4 Afternoon before I leave Hanoi. Upon farewell, Hoang hands me a 200 đồng note. It's rare, he says, but I have many so you can keep one. Inflation has rocketed in the past few years that the Vietnamese currency has three too many zeros. I wish I brought along some yen with me that day.

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8/4 morning: We said goodbye at Southwark as I watched you climb up the Golden Jubilee Bridge before I turned my back to go home to the other side of the river; we said goodbye when your dad dropped me off at the airport in Singapore; we said goodbye after you took me out to our favourite dobbogi and night-toured around Seoul; we said goodbye at the train station when I still lived in Shonan. And here is another goodbye on a rainy morning at a country both foreign to us. Goodbyes, they don't get easier over the years but it won't be long till we meet again.

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8/1 We were asking the security guard for directions to X-Lab (he didn't know either so he asked the man next door, right in the photo) when it started raining cats and dogs so we sat outside Burger King for a good half hour. He took the helmets from the motorcycles parked outside so that they wouldn't get wet and carried a little girl across the street when she didn't want to step into the puddle. We would've loved to talk to him more if we spoke Vietnamese but we shrugged our shoulders at the rain and exchanged laughters.

[joyceshoots]

Meet my best friend Tim. He is 21.8cm taller than the average Japanese and 8.2cm taller than the average Dutch guy.

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Meet my best friend Tim. He is 193cm tall and lives in Japan.

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10: 日本の実家は神戸にある。 I hopped onto a night bus to Kansai to make a surprise visit and even though I made reservations at a hostel near Osaka, Haru welcomed me (and Anna who was visiting me at the same time) to her house and we had a picnic at a park with her mom the next morning. It became a home that I returned to many times in the next few years, and certainly for many years to come. Thank you for being there through every high and low, constantly reminding me to be proud of who I am.

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09: 留学の初めの一歩。 Typhoon #12. Moe took me to Enoshima Aquarium and then we spent the afternoon running against the wind along Yuigahama. We laughed and laughed and laughed.

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08: 初めて辻堂に行ったとき。 2011. When I came to Japan for my study abroad year, Moe kindly let me stay at hers for the first few nights before before school started. I probably couldn’t even pronounce the station name correctly, and I never would’ve guess that someday I’d live there too (although only briefly). I like to think that everything is connected; there must have been something in this place that brought me back.

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07: 乗鞍岳剣ヶ峰を登った夏。 Summer 2010, I worked at a pension in Norikura Highlands for 2 weeks with a friend, picking blueberries, helping out in the kitchen and doing housework. We also worked along 2 Taiwanese girls who we stayed friends till now. During our free time, the host kindly let us off to explore the area and this was the morning when we woke up at 3am to catch the bus that carried us another hour up the mountains, arriving at the lookout just before sunrise. We then spent the morning hiking up to Kengamine, the highest peak in the Norikura range, where a white wooden torii sits solemnly at 3026m. Life.

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06: 黄金色の夕日。 We failed to find a rental bicycle shop but luckily, still decided to trail around this beautiful lake for a good couple of hours to watched the sun fall behind the mountains from the reservoir. I pulled my camera out to capture the remaining minutes of today’s sunlight when a girl called my name.

“Joyce, look at the sun there. It’s golden.”

Thank you for this magical moment.

[joyceshoots]

05: 旅するリサーチ・ラボラトリーの途中。 I swam towards Ami-san and tip-toed on the seabed to get a little bit closer. I might have dropped the camera into the water but I didn't care. The sun was setting behind us: it will only set once today.

[joyceshoots]

04: 旅するリサーチ・ラボラトリーの途中。 Tabi-labo Day 5. After several intensive days of interviews we arrived at Awajishima, a big island that is connected to Kobe City by Akashi Kaikyo Bridge. It was the only place of the whole research trip where we stayed for 2 nights. We first visited the Nojima Fault Preservation Museum where I went on an earthquake stimulator for the first time and then we went to the beach in the evening. The water was cooling down by the time I changed into my new swimsuit but the warm current underneath the surface wrapped my tanned and mosquito-bitten legs. This is Shitamichi-san savouring the moment. It was a cloudless day.