10 years ago about this time I was moving across the pacific from Ohio to Utsunomiya. I had just met Naoto, he was still at Jamestown, planning to move to Tokyo.

It was my second time in Japan. I had a 2 year contract with Sakushin Gakuin, with a vague idea that I'd get a masters afterwards. Naoto wasn't really that much a part of my future...yet.

If you told me at that time that 10 years later I'd be sitting in an apartment in Tokyo, painstakingly sewing a stuffed heart onto a bag for my eldest daughter's kindergarten, I'd have said "My butt!"

Yep, that's what I would have said.

Funny the paths that life takes us.