My Airport Friend, Ashley

I met Ashley in the Portland airport while we waited for our flight to Japan. I tagged along with her in Tokyo for dinner one night, impressed that she had the Japanese to decipher the subway system and order our dinner. I thought "if I could one day be like that, I'd be happy with my time in Japan." (I can do it now!)

We kept in loose touch over the last two years until she came to visit this spring with some of her Gifu-ken friends. Not much longer later I was looking at the BEE Japan website to see about their cross-country ride this summer. It's something I've been dreaming about doing the summer I leave JET. I was surprised to glance through the 2009 members page and see Ashley's name.

[Ashley and her sister, who is a university teacher in Kyoto]

So she finished her JET term this past July then immediately took a train to the northwestern tip of Hokkaido, where she started a bike ride that would last 2.5 months and cover 4300 kilometers. She finished last week at the southern tip of the Okinawan mainland. Her sister met her in Okinawa and they came out to Zamami for a couple days.

[Ashley thinks we look married, I think my new camera lens is awesome]

I'm really happy to have Ashley staying here. I love that we have maintained a friendship which developed purely out of the coincidence of sitting next to each other in the airport (if you believe it was coincidence that I sat next to her). We have a lot in common, though proximity isn't part of that. She will be leaving tomorrow on her way back to the U.S, but with the ease in which we pick up where we keep leaving off, I feel comfortable saying I think I will see her again and I'm looking forward to it.