It didn’t matter what we did to cap off our first year — we were together. With friends we can make it through anything. — Hiking Mt. Fuji is one of those ideas you knock around with friends for years, perhaps even a lifetime. To make the memory, action is required. This prevents many of us from enacting the dreams our hearts long to live; they seem improbable until we take that first step and…

What does it mean to have a heart? — A friend thought about a word to describe me; alive. A work in progress, an imperfect melody that rises and falls, for music inspires all I create as music’s alive and makes me the same — instruments the beating heart, lyrics what the heart represents: How it feels to have…

Stumbling toward my dreams while caught in a summer storm. — I’m sitting at Osaka Chakai, a matcha cafe in Osaka, Japan. This cafe was my buddy Santana’s living room while he lived in this country. His experience here emanated from his fascination with the foamy green matcha poured behind the counter. But it was the shop owner, Kauru, who gave…

Taking a shot on love — My writing is nothing more than a chronicle of my emotion, an assemblage of scenes both painful and bright, exciting and mundane, stitched together with this thing called I as the thread. I hope to convey how no story is more meaningful than the other; none more beautiful. …

A birthday poem. What I have discovered on the journey of my life. — Thought I’d be on my own When I came to Japan, Lone wolf wanderin’ With his paper and his pen. At least I’d have my dream and that would Sustain; it has and it will A dream to understand. Fuck was I wrong, made Lifelong friends On our individual journeys Persisting Thriving, Improving crying falling Flying Hand in hand. Wings collect…

We can’t know love without the possibility of pain — My heart and my mind pulled in different directions; love and confusion, life proffers another lesson. …

We can’t hold on to the things we love. Difficult Goodbyes and Beautiful Beginnings PT 3. — Let the dust settle. Be easy. Watch. Think. Wonder. Be. Life doesn’t need to fall back in place; an illusory grip of control. Everything’s where it’s meant to be. Notice the way things are and how you feel. Honor the emotion. We can’t capture the things we love — moments…

And that’s wherever we go if we’re willing to seek them. — The past two weeks have been surreal. Last week was one of the most memorable weeks of my life, and the week prior I spent with my dad who was visiting me in Japan. …

On my time in Okinawa with my dad and returning home to Osaka Japan to continue the adventure. — Day My dad and I park the car at Sunayama Beach, a cove on the island of Miyakojima, Japan. I snap a few photos of the vending machine draped in vines and the Shisa statue, one of the ubiquitous guardian lions of Okinawa. …