The End of a Culture

I make my own yogurt (more on that in a later post). But today I ate the last of the same culture I've been using since January 2nd. I have to make new yogurt, at a minimum, every three-four days to keep the culture alive and healthy. So this means I haven't been away from my yogurt for more than four days this year.

And in fact, I haven't been away that long since I arrived in Okinawa a year ago. I did some math a few months ago and realized that in my first year here, I haven't travelled more than about 45 miles/65km from my home. And without the fishing trip with my parents off the east side of the Okinawa mainland, that distance would only be 31 miles/51km.

This is a rather interesting statistic mostly because I can't imagine a circumstance where it could ever be duplicated again in my life. I will be breaking the streak next week when I travel to northern Japan to see my sister, then to central Japan to see a friend, then to Osaka for a two-week language course.