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Visiting a Japanese Tea Farm

On Tynan

I wake up in Capsule Inn Osaka, the world's first capsule hotel. I expected it to be more of a novelty, but its tiny size mimics my RV so closely that it's the most familiar place I've slept all month. I'm in the middle of my 7 day unlimited train pass, so there's no time for dilly-dallying. I jog to the train station, scarf down a fruit and nut bar, and head for Nara.

Nara is home of the biggest Buddha in Japan, which is surrounded by a giant wooden building, which is surrounded by schoolchildren with mandates to practice their English with whitey, who are surrounded by aggressive deer trying to eat anything they can get from the children.

After feeding the deer, conversing with the children, and taking a few pictures of the truly enormous Buddha, I run back to the station just in time to catch my train. The capsule hotel and Nara are just warm-ups (albeit totally out of the way warm-ups) to the main event: staying with a tea-farming family in Fujieda, Japan.

Cathay De-Escalates, Clears Marshall of Wrongdoing


I know everyone is getting bored of Cathay, and I'm trying to get back on interesting strategic content, philosophy, etc. But hey, I want to give credit where it's due - they've started to de-escalate and get reasonable.

Some facts here are wrong, and there's some omissions. But anyways, I appreciate this Joseph.

I filmed a video reply (that's friendly!) and I'll post it later. Really, it's entertaining.

Anyways, they're originally saying I caused a gigantic disturbance and was a huge problem, then I said I was going to bring tons of legal action against them (which, y'know, usually means they'd want to preserve their leverage by holding everything over my head that they can), and yet now they just filed no complaints, no charges, and cleared me to fly. That's interesting, isn't it?

From: Customer-Relations Subject: Re: MR SEBASTIAN MARSHALL - 26 December 2011 / KA 482 / Hong Kong to Taipei (KMM10053232I15977L0KM) Date: January 4, 2012 11:02:28 AM GMT+08:00 To: Sebastian

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