I took a two-week trip to Japan, mostly around Tokyo, Kyoto, Uji, Nara, and Osaka. I arrived expecting a quirky, futuristic vacation destination. Instead, I found myself thinking about whether Japan is a blueprint for a resilient civilization: one that optimizes for stability, trust, quality, and long-term thinking more than raw growth.

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This is not a travel guide. I did not photograph everything, partly because some places were not appropriate to photograph and partly because a camera can make you miss the thing you came to see. Tourism has clearly damaged parts of Japan, and I have to acknowledge that I was part of that problem even though I tried my best to be conscientious.

If you visit, learn a little Japanese. Even a few phrases help: arigatou gozaimasu for thank you, sumimasen for excuse me, mizu for water, and onegaishimasu for please. Many people will go 100 extra miles for you. You can meet them in a small way by learning a few words.

History and Language

Japan’s native religion is Shinto. Over centuries, Chinese writing, Buddhism, and Confucian ideas entered Japan through cultural exchange with the Asian mainland. Hiragana and katakana eventually developed from Chinese characters, and modern Japanese now combines native grammar, Chinese-derived kanji, and Western loanwords typically written in katakana.

I am in the process of taking Chinese classes, and I was pleased to discover that knowing some Chinese occasionally helps when reading signs. Many kanji originated from Chinese characters, so you sometimes get a faint hint of meaning. Kanji make up about 41% of written Japanese, and about 95% of kanji usage comes from the 1,000 most common characters. As an aspiring polyglot, that makes me excited that my progress in Chinese may pay off as an even longer-term investment toward Japanese one day. That being said, the languages are fundamentally different. Japanese uses subject-object-verb grammar, has an honorifics system, and sounds nothing like Mandarin.

Shinto and Buddhism remain culturally important, but as an outsider I often felt I was seeing their cultural descendants more than explicit theological systems. Many Japanese participate through ritual, tradition, festivals, funerals, shrines, temples, and community without necessarily describing themselves as religious in the way Americans might expect.

Christianity accounts for only about 1% of Japan’s population. Portuguese traders helped open the first channel in the sixteenth century (Sengoku period), but Christianity itself was introduced by a Jesuit missionary. Nagasaki became the center of Japanese Catholicism before the government banned the religion and drove many believers underground for centuries. The American atomic bombing later devastated Japan’s then-largest Catholic community. That was catastrophic for local Christians, but it does not explain Christianity’s low national share; the deeper cause is a much longer history of suppression and limited adoption.

I could not shake the feeling that Zen aesthetics influenced many aspects of Japanese culture: precision, simplicity, restraint, attention to detail, and intentionality. Historians would probably say the causes are more complex, and they would be right. But that was my personal impression.

Tea Time

The magnum opus of the trip was a tea tasting in Tokyo, though it had surprisingly little to do with the tea itself.

We had seen tea production in Uji, which is famous for green tea. That was wonderful. But the Tokyo tasting was something else entirely. Their service was so precise and attentive that it became almost hypnotic.

The room was nearly silent except for soft Bossa Nova playing in the background. The lights were dimmed to a comfortable level. When we sat down, a freshly steamed towel was placed in front of us in a tight, neat roll. The tea masters were dressed in clean white lab coats, like scientists running a lab experiment where the subject was my nervous system.

Before brewing each tea, the tea master would present the leaves, whisper the name, and gesture for us to smell the aroma. Then he would prepare it with a different method depending on the tea. In some cases, he used a shockingly large amount of leaves to produce only a few drops of liquid. We watched him extract those drops by moving the pot with a precise, repeated motion, coaxing the water out as if he were operating a tiny hydraulic machine.

Every cup, box, pair of chopsticks, and instrument was placed at exact right angles with even spacing. I could not observe a single careless calorie burned. We were never asked to hand him anything. He would reach across the table and place things directly in front of us, perfectly aligned. If a tiny gap formed between chopsticks, he corrected it.

I never moved a muscle except to drink tea or eat a palate cleanser.

The tea tasted wonderful, of course, but the service was what shattered me. I hesitate to call it love, because as soon as we left, we were probably out of their mind. But it felt adjacent to love. Maybe a caring obsession.

That, more than the flavor of the tea, became my working theory of Japan: care expressed through competence. It was not loud. It was not sentimental. It was not the American service posture of forced cheerfulness. It was something quieter and more demanding. It felt like a miniature form of enlightenment.

Jazz

Japan has one of the most vibrant jazz cultures I have ever encountered. Jazz was everywhere, and I was thrilled. Most of the time it leaned toward Bossa Nova; I specifically remember hearing a lot of Antonio Carlos Jobim.

The most interesting expression of this is the jazz kissaten, or jazz listening cafe. These became especially important after World War II, when imported records and high-end audio equipment were expensive. Instead of treating music as background noise, the point was to sit quietly and listen. Many of these cafes are built around excellent sound systems, deep collections of vinyls, and a kind of reverent attention that feels rare in the United States.

I wish America had these. We have coffee shops where the music is too loud to ignore but too unimportant to actually listen to. Japan appears to have invented a place where the music is the point.

Economy

The Japanese economy is both amazing and slightly tragic.

Japan has a strong emphasis on stability and long-term endurance. This creates obvious benefits: low crime, high trust, durable institutions, and a society that feels like it can absorb shocks. It also comes with trade-offs. Risk appetite appears lower than in the United States, entrepreneurship seems less culturally romanticized, and many systems favor continuity over rapid change.

Interest rates are one example. Mortgages can be astonishingly cheap compared to the United States, often around 1-2% depending on the borrower and product. Japan even had a period of negative interest rates. For foreigners, accessing that capital is difficult. Banks care less about a credit score in the American sense and more about local embeddedness: residence, employment, bank history, tax filings, company operations, relationships, and demonstrated commitment.

This is part of what makes the Japanese carry trade famous. Investors borrow cheaply in yen and deploy capital elsewhere where returns may be higher. It sounds simple until currency moves against you, and then the “free money” starts looking less free.

Employment culture was also fascinating. I was told many Japanese workers still have far fewer employers across their lifetime than Americans do. The expectation has historically been to join a company and climb within it. Quitting can carry enough social friction that resignation services exist, where someone else helps communicate your resignation for you.

One impression I repeatedly had was the depth of specialization. Whether I was watching a tea master, a train employee, a pharmacist, or an old noodle cook, many people appeared to spend years refining a narrow craft. In America, a highly competent person often asks, “How do I scale this?” In Japan, I felt like the question was sometimes, “How do I perfect this?”

Lower wages appear to be offset somewhat by affordable living costs, especially outside the most expensive districts. Japan does not feel poor. It feels like a place where many ordinary expenses are contained, public infrastructure is reliable, and quality is distributed very evenly.

We saw almost no homeless people. I am sure homelessness exists there, but it seems like their society makes it difficult to reach that level of poverty, or at least difficult for it to become as publicly visible and entrenched as it is in many American cities.

Japan’s aging population also changes the conversation around immigration and foreign workers. The country is still not a casual immigration free-for-all, but demographic pressure seems to be creating more openness than existed in the past.

Japan is also far more globally deployed than its domestic culture might suggest. It has about 33.6 trillion yen (USD 208 billion) in outward foreign direct investment, roughly 5% of GDP, putting it second in the world behind only the United States and ahead of China. That matters for immigration and employment too: if Japanese companies want to keep participating in international markets, they need more people who can operate in decent English, the default business language of global trade.

Cost of Living

Compared to expensive American cities, Japan felt remarkably affordable. Tourist traps exist and will absolutely find you, but once you step outside the most obvious areas, food, transit, clothing, and even housing can feel surprisingly reasonable.

Tipping is unnecessary and often creates confusion. We consistently ate out at a standard of quality that felt about two notches above the average American restaurant, with superb service. You also do not wait for a waiter to keep checking on you every few minutes. If you need something, you call out sumimasen, and they arrive soon after.

Some representative prices from the trip:

• A typical restaurant meal: 1,780 yen (USD 11) per person
• A filling bowl of udon: 170 yen (USD 1.05)
• A loaf of bread: 200 yen (USD 1.24)
• A pod hotel: 4,850 yen (USD 30) per night
• A short-sleeved shirt: 1,290 yen (USD 7.98)
• A pair of jeans: 4,990 yen (USD 30.88)
• Petrol: 177 yen per liter (USD 4.15 per gallon)

The cheapest meal we had was probably the udon. The shop fit maybe eight people and had no seats. Everyone stood to eat. There was only an old man with his cooking supplies, quietly turning out bowls of noodles. The room was silent except for the happy slurping of noodles and the motion of the man cooking. As with many small places, you pay cash as exactly as you can and leave.

Coins are genuinely useful here. Vending machines are everywhere. You can load coins onto a Suica card, buy a gachapon, play arcade games, or toss one into a shrine before making a wish. It is strange as an American to hold a 100 yen (USD 0.62) coin and realize it actually matters.

Convenience stores, or konbini, are deeply integrated into daily life. 7-Eleven, Lawson, and FamilyMart are not sad gas station food portals like in the United States. They sell surprisingly decent meals, snacks, toiletries, tickets, and all kinds of emergency items. Convenience-store food is affordable enough that it narrows the gap with cooking at home, especially for single people.

7-Eleven is especially funny because it began as an American company, became tired and unremarkable in its home market, and then the Japanese side of the business turned the model into something extraordinary. Eventually, Japan’s Seven & i Holdings acquired control of the American parent company. Somehow Japan took our convenience store and gave it back to us with dignity.

In major cities, public transportation is so effective that many people can comfortably live without a car. That changes everything. If you remove car payments, fuel, insurance, maintenance, and parking from a household budget, the whole cost structure of life shifts.

Real Estate

Japan is an interesting case study for real estate because it does not behave exactly like the American market. Population decline changes the meaning of scarcity. In many areas, there is not an assumption that every building will appreciate forever just because time passed.

Foreigners can own Japanese property, and property ownership by itself does not automatically make you a Japanese tax resident. Financing is the difficult part. From what I gathered, a foreigner who wants Japanese bank financing needs to build a real local footprint: bank accounts, tax filings, operations, relationships, and time.

Condominiums and apartments are common, and in many cases the building is treated as a depreciating asset. This is partly because structures age, earthquake standards improve, and the unit may not give you direct ownership of the underlying land in the way an American house often does. Newer buildings are attractive not only because they look nicer, but because earthquake and tsunami resistance has improved over time. New builds are also highly sought after because they let you place new tenants at current market rent, which matters a lot in a country with strong tenant protections.

A 2LDK or 3LDK condominium – two or three bedrooms/rooms plus living, dining, and kitchen – with about 70 square meters (753 square feet) of space in Tokyo might run around 80 million yen (USD 495,000). Renting a similar place might be about 200,000 yen (USD 1,240) per month.

Japan does not have classic American-style rent control everywhere, but residential tenants can be difficult to remove, rent increases can be hard to force, and landlords generally cannot treat non-renewal as casually as they might in some US states. The market seems optimized more for stable occupancy and long-term ownership than aggressive rent growth.

For anyone thinking like an investor, that means caution. Rural “cheap” houses and suspiciously high yields may be cheap for a reason. Fukuoka and Osaka seemed more compelling to me than chasing abandoned countryside properties just because a YouTube thumbnail said they cost less than a used Honda.

Urban Design

Japan’s mixed zoning deserves praise. My understanding is that Japanese zoning tends to regulate nuisance levels more than rigid categories of use. Instead of forcing every activity into separate zones for residential, commercial, and office life, more things can coexist as long as they stay within the allowed impact level.

This is brilliant. It allows apartments, cafes, small shops, clinics, offices, and restaurants to live near each other naturally, while still preventing genuinely disruptive uses from invading quiet areas. Instead of forcing planners to guess the correct arrangement of daily life in advance, mixed zoning lets the free market decide where things belong most efficiently.

The result is a kind of everyday convenience that American suburbs often fail to produce. In much of the US, we separate everything and then wonder why everyone needs a car.

I also liked the Japanese addressing system, even though it can be confusing at first. In the United States, an address usually points you along a named street with numbers increasing in a predictable direction. In Japan, addresses are more like a grid of areas: prefecture, city, ward, district, block, and building. Streets often matter less than the block itself. It feels strange until you realize it is a very systematic way to describe location in dense cities.

Transportation

The train system is incredible. I knew this before arriving, but knowing and experiencing are different. Suica cards make local transit easy. The Shinkansen is fast, clean, and civilized. Coin lockers are everywhere, which means you can move through a city without dragging luggage behind you like a defeated airport goblin.

Trains are treated almost like libraries. People speak quietly, and phone calls are discouraged.

I also saw children riding trains on their own. That image says more about social trust than any policy paper ever could, but it also speaks to the independence, responsibility, intelligence, and self-confidence expected of Japanese children. A society where parents can put a child on a train alone is operating with assumptions Americans often no longer have.

Japan’s tactile paving network is the most extensive accessibility infrastructure I have ever seen. The raised yellow guidance paths for blind and low-vision pedestrians are everywhere: stations, sidewalks, crossings, platforms, and public buildings. Elevators, doors, and even bidet controls almost always had an accessible set of buttons. I did not see many visibly disabled people relative to the volume of pedestrian traffic, but the infrastructure was so pervasive that it changed my expectations for what public design can look like.

Kyoto at night deserves mention here too. People sat along the Kamo River, often couples spaced at oddly regular intervals, as if some invisible city planner had arranged them by ruler. Canals, narrow streets, small restaurants, and foot traffic created an atmosphere that felt public without being chaotic.

Social Life

Making friends in Japan seems more difficult than in the United States. Casual conversation with strangers appears far less common. Trains are quiet, small talk is limited, and public life is governed by a strong norm of not inconveniencing others.

That does not mean people are cold. It means the channels are different. If I were trying to build community in Japan, I would probably look at hobby clubs, language exchanges, or martial arts dojos. Church groups, a common answer in the United States, probably would not help much in a country where only about 1% of the population is Christian.

The hobby culture appears intense in the best way. Airsoft, cosplay, trading cards, audiophiles, anime, insect collecting, musical instruments, and countless niche interests all seem to have people who go deep. I was very surprised to find an entire storefront dedicated to ham radio. My impression was that many people pick a thing and refine it rather than casually dabbling across twenty things.

Love and Dating

A local told me formal confessions of love, or kokuhaku, remain common in dating. Rather than gradually drifting into a relationship, one person explicitly states romantic interest and asks to become a couple. I was told this can happen within the first few dates. Physical affection may progress more deliberately, and inviting someone to your apartment can carry stronger implications than Americans might assume.

I was also told group introductions, or gokon, are common. A friend typically organizes a dinner or drinks for an equal number of single men and women, often drawing from two existing friend groups. Everyone meets as a group, which lowers the pressure of a one-on-one blind date, and people who connect can arrange something separately afterward. More broadly, people may meet through friends, coworkers, clubs, hobbies, or other organized social settings.

Japan also has wakaresaseya, or breakup services, where agencies can be hired to help end a relationship. That sounds bizarre at first, but it fits into the broader theme of outsourcing socially difficult or emotionally uncomfortable interactions. It is obviously not something I would endorse, but it is fascinating that the market exists.

At the same time, Japan clearly has businesses built around loneliness: maid cafes, host and hostess clubs, rent-a-girlfriend services, love hotels, and other categories that may feel strange to Americans at first glance. But I do not think this is as foreign as it looks. America has its own softer versions: Hooters, bartenders who remember your name, Twitch streamers, and other businesses where the product is partly food, entertainment, or ambiance, but partly human attention.

I also think we underestimate how many lonely jobs exist in plain sight. Truck driving is one of the largest occupations in America, and yet how many truck drivers do you actually know? Many people spend long stretches of life unseen, unrooted, or socially starved. Whatever ethical qualms someone may have with these businesses, I suspect this market will grow in America and elsewhere because the demand is real. And honestly, is there anything inherently wrong with seeking connection? The troubling part is not that people want connection; it is that so many people have to buy a simulation of it.

Food

Japanese food is better than its American imitation, which sounds obvious but still deserves to be said. The range is enormous: takoyaki, yakitori, ramen, soba, udon, wagyu, Japanese BBQ, omakase, matcha desserts, convenience-store snacks, izakaya plates, and things I did not know how to identify but was happy to eat.

Ramen booths were fascinating. Some places are arranged so you can eat in a tiny cubby with minimal social interaction. A little door slides open, the food appears, and then the door closes again. In some cases, you use small tokens or cards with words on them to communicate what you want without having to say anything. It is an introvert’s dream: excellent noodles without performing a whole restaurant experience.

Izakayas felt designed for ordinary people. Outside tourist corridors, you can get small plates and drinks for very reasonable prices. At one cheap izakaya, my friends got beers for 450 yen (USD 2.78) apiece. They are social, casual, and often tied to after-work culture. I can easily imagine coworkers decompressing there with a boss in a way that blends hierarchy, alcohol, and food into one complicated social machine.

Matcha is everywhere, almost like Japan’s alternative to chocolate as the default dessert flavor. Uji especially leans into this. I also learned about hojicha lattes, made from roasted green tea.

Wagyu is delicious, but tourist areas put it on everything, even in cases where it can barely be appreciated. Deep frying expensive beef feels like putting premium gasoline into a lawn mower. You can do it, but you’re completely missing the point.

I also tried horse, pork heart, and turtle. I liked all of them and would happily eat them again.

Shrines and Temples

Shrines and temples were everywhere, but they did not feel interchangeable. Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples serve different roles, even though many visitors probably blur them together.

At some shrines, people write wishes on small wooden plaques. At others, they draw fortunes. I received a bad fortune at one point and later tied it to a designated place so I could symbolically walk away from it and, eventually, a monk could burn the bad luck away. I also drew a love fortune, because apparently I enjoy letting random slips of paper bully me.

What struck me most was how ordinary these practices seemed. They were not hidden away as museum pieces. They were part of the texture of daily life: ritual, hope, family, luck, gratitude, anxiety, and tradition all given a physical form.

Entertainment

Japan is all about dopamine-maxing.

Pachinko parlors are loud, smoky, bright, and overwhelming. Arcades are still alive in a way they are not in most of America. Gachapon machines are everywhere, and they are engineered to turn small coins into tiny regrets with impressive efficiency.

Nara was its own category. You are supposed to bow to the deer, and many of them will bow back. They are cute until they realize you have crackers, at which point you are negotiating with a small antlered mafia. My friends got bit and harassed while I laughed at them, which I understand is part of the authentic experience.

The monkey park was also memorable, partly because monkeys are fascinating and partly because they were picky. Peanuts were apparently beneath them, but apples were accepted with enthusiasm.

Health and Hygiene

Japan continued my campaign against American toilets. I was already a bidet fan, and Dubai further confirmed it, but Japan made the case unavoidable. Bidets should be standard everywhere. This is not up for debate.

Bathing culture was also different. Onsens require you to wash before entering, and the bathing itself is communal. Yes, that means nudity. After the first few minutes, it becomes less awkward because everyone else behaves like an adult.

At one point I sat in a room so hot it felt like I was inside a volcano. My eyes were burning, I could barely breathe, and I think I know what dying feels like now. Then I left, rinsed the sweat off, dipped into an ice-cold bath, and later rested in a warm room with soft music and low lights designed for naps. It felt incredible, and I would do it a million more times.

There were annoyances. Trash cans can be hard to find. Bathrooms can be hard to find unless you are already inside a station, store, or restaurant. Some bathrooms lacked soap, which surprised me. Restaurants often provide moist towelettes but not many napkins, so you may find yourself very clean in one specific way and underserved in another.

I got sick during the trip and had to interact with the pharmacy system. The difference between Eastern and Western medicine was noticeable. I tried to find zinc supplements or something closer to addressing the underlying cause, but mostly found the equivalent of Excedrin: helpful for symptoms, not the root problem.

The pharmacist personally verified that the medicine was for me, that I understood the dosage, that I would not overdose, and that it would not conflict with what I was already taking. It was a level of care that honestly shocked me. In America, we often treat medicine like a self-checkout lane with side effects.

Mask culture in Asia already made sense to me, but getting sick there made me appreciate it again. It is not only about fear. It is also about not inconveniencing others, which may be Japan’s unofficial modus operandi.

Lodging

Pod hotels are efficient, but I did not enjoy them. The pod itself was not bad. The problem is everything around the pod. You cannot use an alarm, you are forced to use a gross, stinky locker room, there is not enough space, and you are constantly in someone’s way.

Ryokans, on the other hand, were wonderful. The rooms, meals, tea, yukata robes, and deeply hospitable staff created a slower rhythm. It felt less like a hotel and more like being temporarily adopted by a building.

The service again followed the same pattern: quiet competence, careful presentation, and minimal wasted motion. Nobody needed to announce that they cared. The evidence was folded, placed, cleaned, prepared, and waiting.

Politics

I will keep this brief because politics was not the main point of the trip.

The conservative Liberal Democratic Party has dominated much of Japan’s postwar political life. I also heard about Sanseito‘s recent rise, an even more conservative party connected to broader frustration around immigration, cost of living, and national identity. Voter participation seems lower than one might expect for such a cohesive society, though I would need to study this more before saying anything strongly.

My main political impression was not about parties. It was about institutions. Japan feels like a country where the state, private companies, transit systems, schools, shops, and ordinary citizens all operate inside a dense web of expectations. Some of that is beautiful. Some of it is probably suffocating. Both can be true.

The End

I came to Japan expecting novelty. I left thinking about intentionality.

The futuristic parts are fun: trains, vending machines, arcades, toilets, convenience stores, and tiny machines that dispense plastic toys for coins. But Japan did not feel magical because it was futuristic. It felt magical because ordinary things were done with extraordinary intention.

The tea master, the old udon cook, the train staff, the pharmacist, the ryokan hosts, the shopkeepers, the people silently making room for each other in public spaces – each represented a small piece of a larger civilizational posture.

Care expressed through intentionality.

I am sure I misunderstood plenty. I was a foreigner passing through for two weeks, not an expert. But I left with gratitude, admiration, and a strong desire to return after learning more of the language.

Until then, I will be thinking about those ten drops of tea, and about a country built to outlast the rest.

I took a trip to visit one of my best friends, Vipin, over in Dubai. Despite several prior attempts, this was my first time traveling internationally. Below I summarize everything I saw and learned while there.

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Economy

The United Arab Emirates Dirham (AED) is pegged to the United States Dollar (USD) at a ratio of 1 dollar = 3.67 dirhams.

Everyone has a job here. Here, there are people constantly cleaning the floors of the malls. A bathroom attendant ensures the stalls are clean at all times. Swimming pools have two lifeguards staffed even during hours where no one would swim. Many locations, like banks or malls, have extremely polite greeters or guides. The skyline is filled with cranes; massive construction projects are finished in mere months, not years. In the States, most companies would deem this as inefficient, but the fundamental economics here are vastly different.

Aside from a few exceptions, there is no minimum wage here. Data varies, but the median monthly salary is about AED 19,000 (USD 5,177). That’s AED 109 (USD 30) per hour, or AED 228,000 (USD 62,125) per year.

This is the new land of opportunity. Many people, especially Indians or Filipinos, come here to start a new life. Their mindset is very similar to the immigrants arriving at Ellis Island in the early 1900’s, all seeking something resembling the American dream. Demographically speaking, this means there are a lot of single or married men (bringing their families) here for work. Dubai doesn’t seem to attract as many single women, and if it does they tend to be very independent or entrepreneurial.

Mall culture is pervasive here, and it makes sense. In the US, it’s a dying feature, but in the Emirates many people walk, take the Metro (light rail), or use taxis and ride-share. The malls are extravagantly beautiful, enormous, and air-conditioned. It’s an ideal place to congregate with friends away from the hot sun and have a meal or snack, complete some errands, or find some entertainment. American chains are surprisingly common.

Petrol (gas) costs about the same here, maybe less. For the lowest/regular 95 octane, the rate was AED 2.60 / liter (USD 2.68 / gallon). Note that in the US, the lowest/regular octane is generally 87; premium is typically 93. All petrol stations are manned, you don’t get out of the car to pump your own petrol. They will even wipe your windshields while you wait.

India

These economic features don’t just shape the city – they shape who comes here. And no group has contributed more to Dubai’s growth than its Indian expatriate community. Many Indians come searching for promising job opportunities. In India, widespread bureaucracy and corruption frequently add costs and delays for businesses. These issues tend to suppress salaries and deter foreign investment. Coupled with an education system that leaves much to be desired, this environment drives many educated or ambitious Indians to look abroad for work or further study.

India is the world’s largest democracy, and harbors 6 national parties and ~58 state parties, a shocking contrast to the United States’ majority 2. In order to reach a majority, these parties form coalitions with each other. Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, conservative) has served as prime minister since 2014 and, in a close race involving coalitions, was recently re-elected. He has been a controversial figure because he has indicated a desire to alter the constitution in favor of Hindu and/or nationalist goals. India has long been a country representing religious diversity and has hosted every major (and minor) religion for decades. But under Modi’s rule, critics point to growing concerns over religious tolerance and civil liberties, especially for minority communities including Muslims and Christians.

All this being said, to many Indians, Modi does represent the only significant hope of economic re-stabilization – even to those who would otherwise be his enemy. He is making efforts to reduce corruption, and thereby improve economic conditions within his borders. He has inspired much hope in his people.

The Emirates are naturally an attractive option to Indians: its close proximity, strong job market, pro-expat policies, etc. Given the already large population of Indians and proliferation of their cultural norms, the barrier to entry is minimal, and it is a comfortable environment for newly incoming Indians to immigrate.

Church

The church has a limited presence here. The Sheikhs have graciously gifted land where churches may build. Public practice of Christianity is not allowed unless granted permission (usually for very large congregations). Because the buildings are few, many congregations either meet in private spaces such as hotels, or they will share a parent church building and hold services at odd times. I visited Covenant Hope Church; they met at 15:00 on Sundays. Conversion away (apostasy) from Islam is not legally recognized, and proselytizing to Muslims is forbidden. Blasphemy, in the eyes of Muslims, is prohibited.

Although the church is small, it is mighty. Church membership (as in official status, not attendance) seems to be far more common here than in the States, and it makes sense. Many expatriates are far from home and family; in many cases they will come completely alone. The church serves as their family, and they rely on each other to survive. In many cases they find roommates, close friends, or even spouses within the congregation. Dubai is an easy city to fall into sin, and they hold each other graciously accountable and check in with each other. Membership means you’ve been accepted into that church family, and grant them the authority to hold you accountable. And when they say you will be held accountable, they mean it – if you disappear, they will actually reach out. It’s not like in the States where you can fade out and no one will ask questions. They hold members meetings at least monthly, perhaps even more often than that.

Friends

And through the church, I quickly found myself surrounded by friends. I was very surprised by how quickly I felt at home. Vipin introduced me to his friends Navya, Simon, Param, and Rishav – and I felt like we all had known each other for years. We traded dark humor, dove into meaningful conversation, prayed for each other, and broke bread together. I’m going to miss these brothers and sister, and hope to return soon. I will be checking in on them periodically from afar.

I didn’t receive explicit permission to publicize their names, so the following individuals will be represented by their first initials. I stayed with Vipin, in C and G’s house; a lovely Scottish/English couple with two well-groomed Scottish terriers. I met the delightful housekeeper M, roommates S, T, and G – all of them splendid and gregarious. I had a relaxing study and pool day with the sisters L and B, originally from South Africa. I enjoyed spicy chai tea with K and S (and their energetic son Y), who were days away from welcoming a new baby boy.

Simon, Vipin, and I joined A (who was about to get married) and his parents in his home for some delicious dinner. Indian hospitality is astounding – overflowing plates, heartfelt conversation, and a welcoming attitude that makes you feel like family! We later joined them on a trip to Global Village, which was just as joyful.

Once per week, a talented South Indian cook comes to Vipin’s place; thanks to her, I learned to eat fish biryani like an authentic Indian! Vipin and I had brunch with D about local real estate, which I found tremendously eye opening and I’ll certainly be calling him back in the future.

Food

Nearly every meal felt like a bargain. On one night, we fed a group of 6 people for AED 191.50 (USD 52.18) on some delicious Pakistani food; that’s AED 31.92 (USD 8.70) per person! All bellies were full, and we had leftovers to spare. This was at Nayaab Haandi, and it was arguably the best food I had during the whole trip!

A particular favorite of mine was Aroos Damascus, a Syrian restaurant. We ate here once, and ordered delivery twice more. The hummus was other-worldly, and the arayes – a grilled flatbread stuffed with meat – reminded me of a steak quesadilla (but Mediterranean).

Tipping is not expected, but appreciated. Many times you will not even see a prompt for it. You must raise your hand and ask for the check.

Food delivery is affordable. On the roads, you will see countless, uniformed delivery people mounted on Honda motorcycles with brightly colored cargo boxes labeled in their brand: Careem, Talabat, Noon, and more – all zipping around like neon beetles.

If you’re familiar with Greek and Indian food, you already know the region’s flavor spectrum. Arabic food is generally similar to Greek food, but as you work your way Eastward toward India, it becomes more like Indian food. Pakistani food leans heavily Indian but with some Middle Eastern notes. Syrian food stays closer to Mediterranean. Although this is an expat country containing nearly every culture imaginable, most restaurants fit somewhere within this spectrum.

Dubai has a park called Global Village, and I believe it is reminiscent to the Worlds Fair that no longer exists (meaning the food and culture component; Dubai has hosted the technology aspect in what is now called Expo). It contains multiple pavilions which represent a microcosm of various countries. For example, in the Yemen pavilion, I met a very kind man named Ahmed who brewed us some red tea on sand. It was so wonderful that I purchased a pack of his personal blend to take home.

As a city of expatriates, of course there are plenty of more exotic options beyond the local demographics. We visited a place we think might be Filipino called Off the Hook – reminiscent of Cajun seafood boils in the US.

Navya, Vipin, and I enjoyed wonderful bowls of noodles at a Taiwanese restaurant in the Dubai Hills Mall, and for dessert, bowls of Italian gelato.

I had some time to kill at the Dubai Mall (largest) and stopped at Hoof for some coffee and brunch. It’s a great place to get some work done!

Groceries

I went to Carrefour (French) and LuLu Hypermarket, both were wonderful. Excellent prices, but with a premium Whole Foods-like feel. Each offers groceries with a decent selection of home goods and electronics, but they didn’t feel as all-encompassing as Walmart or Target. I never quite found a true “one-stop shop” where you can buy food and almost everything under the sun in single trip. It’s not clear to me where locals get their stuff; IKEA and maybe some office supply stores exist. They do have Amazon, AliExpress, and Noon (the local competitor). Second-hand stores like Goodwill don’t seem to be present but would likely enjoy enormous demand.

Prices for a few staples are listed below:

• LuLu flour, AED 3.75 / 1 kg (USD 2.32 / 5 lbs)
• Large eggs, AED 13.50 / 15 eggs (USD 2.94 / 12 eggs)
• LuLu rice, AED 9.90 / 2 kg (USD 3.05 / 5 lbs)
• Carrefour rice, AED 20.00 / 5 kg (USD 2.47 / 5 lbs)
• Carrefour whole milk, AED 18.99 / 3.8 liters (1 gallon) (USD 5.17 / gal)
• Carrefour noodles, AED 12.79 / 500 g (USD 3.16 / 1 lb)
• Glass container set, AED 17.99 (USD 4.90)
• Shower gel, AED 20.49 (USD 5.58)
• Bose Quiet Comfort Ultra Headphones, AED 1099 (USD 300)

By the way, milk prices are hugely subsidized in the US, so you won’t be able to make an apples-to-oranges comparison there.

Clothing

While looking at some statistics for the area, I noticed an uptick in prices for clothing. I decided to check out a few shops in the Mall of Emirates to confirm whether this was true.

Prices for a few basic items are listed below:

• T-shirts, AED 39 (USD 10)
• Polos, AED 49 (USD 13)
• Oxford shirts, AED 69 (USD 19)
• Jeans or Joggers, AED 109 (USD 30)

Real Estate

Food may be cheap, but housing is a different story – and an investment story at that. Real estate in the Emirates is a lucrative business. Expatriates may hold property in designated Freehold zones. Most apartments can be purchased for under AED 1M (USD 272,479). The starting point for purchasing a Villa is about AED 2.7M (USD 735,694). Fixed rate mortgages here usually span 20 years, and require 20% down for resident expatriates; for non-residents, it’s usually 40%. The interest rates are very good right now compared to the US market, just 3.7% (the US currently floats near 6.7%). The quitclaim mechanism in the US also exists here but under different paperwork and name, so it is possible to move your property into a local company after purchase.

Most of the Freehold zones and compelling real estate options exist in Dubai, although Ras Al Kaimah (frequently abbreviated RAK) is an up-and-coming Emirate with liberal laws. A lot of the housing inventory is fairly new, so rehabilitation does not appear to be common; however, expats are starting to look for forever homes, and in these cases rehabilitation is explored.

As with almost everything in the Emirates, the real estate market is tightly integrated with the government databases. The DXB Interact app shows approximate costs per square meter, and even rent yields. The Dubai Rest app is mostly a payment portal for residents to pay their landlords via their UAE Pass / Emirates ID. Landlords can also view and control documents for their properties via this portal, and they can also see rent indices for different zones. This level of transparency makes documentation extremely accessible, and issues like rent disputes straightforward to navigate.

In Dubai there is a popular mode of investing called “Off Plan Properties,” where people invest money into a planned structure (usually towers) to gain a stake in it, then later will reap rental yields. This has become popular due to the rapid increase of immigrants outpacing the housing supply. I’m personally a bit skeptical of this method, but it’s interesting nonetheless. It pairs neatly with the kind of ambitious mega-projects Dubai is famous for, such as the well-known artificial islands: Palm Jumeirah. We drove for probably over an hour across its “palms” and stopped to see the coastline. The scale is staggering.

One practical challenge I noticed is addressing. In the States, a home address is almost as good as a GPS coordinate; in the Emirates, navigation still relies on landmarks or building names, and maps have a hard time keeping up with the latest developments. As a newcomer, this was a stumbling block.

Dubai Air Show

Dubai is an international aviation hub. While I was in town, I visited the Dubai Air Show – a place where cutting-edge aviation and mobility technologies often debut.

Something I quickly noticed while here was that traffic is awful. It isn’t the infrastructure’s fault though: 8 lane highways, extensive light rail, bus networks, top-notch taxi services, etc. The bottleneck really is just the sheer volume of incoming people… the city’s supply can’t keep up with demand, no matter how remarkably fast they build. By golly, Vipin joked to me that he would leave on a trip, and by the time he returned there was a new expressway next to his house. It’s clear the traffic problem here is a major motivator for innovation in transport.

The Emirates appear to be very serious about reinventing mobility. The city is preparing to introduce air taxi services by 2026. Vertiport construction is underway, flight testing and demonstrations are completed, and air traffic control (ATC) systems for flight planning traffic management are in-place. This isn’t a publicity stunt; they have skin in the game… and I have full faith urban air mobility will appear here first before anywhere else.

A major with the police force claimed during a panel that within 1 minute of someone dialing 999 (emergency number), a drone arrives at the scene of the incident for 44% of Dubai’s urban areas. He said the drone deployment is managed via a unified air-traffic and collision-avoidance system. These systems integrate with sensors and jammers in the field which can detect and disrupt non-compliant aircraft. Police drones are only one part of this growing ecosystem – the same infrastructure can support delivery drones, inspection flights, and even passenger air taxis.

Government

As I said earlier, the people in power here are really interested in being king of the hill in technology, and because of that, they often invite entrepreneurs to inform policy. The fact that their government is a federation of monarchies also means that Sheikhs may merely decree that they want something done… and make it so.

Vipin relayed an anecdote illustrating this pace: a Sheikh had authorized a new tower, and upon visiting the site the next day, he asked why no cranes or equipment were present yet – a reminder that momentum is expected to begin immediately. The contrast against the slower, consensus-driven democratic system is unmistakable.

Efficiency comes with trade-offs though. As a privacy-conscious individual, I assumed my activity was viewed with more scrutiny by telecom operators and the state than at home. Like many countries, the Emirates block certain traffic, and tightly regulates services, so you should adjust your expectations accordingly.

Sights

Burj Khalifa

Of course I had to see the Burj Khalifa. It stands 828 meters (half a mile) tall and has held the title of tallest building in the world since 2009. Their neighbor, Saudi Arabia, is actively constructing Jeddah Tower which is planned to be 1 km tall (3,281 ft) by 2028.

In the words of my brother, from that vantage point “the other buildings look like baby buildings.”

Louvre

The Louvre Abu Dhabi was unexpectedly affordable. Beautiful architecture. Perhaps a bit touristy, there were lots of Europeans in there. Simon joined us for this trip!

Grand Mosque

We also checked out the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, the largest mosque in the Emirates. It’s absolutely enormous, with beautiful white marble. There’s so much detail and craftsmanship, and yet somehow it’s the open courtyards and negative space that really captivate you. Simon joined us for this trip too!

The End

I came for the adventure, but I left impressed by the ambition, the hospitality, and the scale of this city that refuses to sit still. I’ll be back – if only to check what they’ve built in the meantime.

Until then, please enjoy these very fashionable salt and pepper Sheikhers.

I visited the O’Cull family cemetery of great legend. It was difficult to hunt down it’s exact location.

Here is a link to all my photos taken on my new camera. I did my best to take a picture of every grave.

O’Cull Cemetery

Through local family members here in Indiana, I found a phone number for a distant cousin named Eldon O’Cull in Ohio who, over a phone call, was able to give me enough vague landmarks to locate what I believed to be the site from satellite view on Google Maps. Eldon is getting along in years and has health problems. I fear that the information he carries will not last long unless I redistribute it.

I then travelled there to confirm it’s existence. Here is the exact location at 38.5401094, -83.6619766.

You can see Mount Olivet Church in the distance from atop this hill. The story goes that this is the church that the legendary Methodist minister James O’Cull first planted.

The cemetery is behind private property. Using my real estate experience, I called the proper offices in government to locate the property owners and establish phone contact. I met the wife in person at the site. The owners are very accommodating and told me the cemetery was open to the public. However, I would recommend anyone else to still contact ahead in the interest of being polite.

The property the cemetery is on is 7268 Dixon Pike and is owned by an Eric and Michelle Crawford. The property in front of the cemetery is 7270 Dixon Pike, it is owned by Eric’s mother. In the interest of their privacy, I will hide their phone numbers from the public internet. If you would like to contact them, email me first at max.ocull@protonmail.com.

Eldon shared many stories with me, but the one that stood out most was about moonshiners. Apparently the O’Culls of past were making moonshine in the North Fork Licking River. The Feds found out about the operation and raided the stillery. The O’Culls, in an effort to destroy the evidence, poured all the moonshine in the river.

The Feds forcibly took ownership of the land, but legally they could not take the cemetery which was protected land. So the cemetery is the last surviving relic of the O’Culls that once lived here.

It is next to impossible for me to validate this story beyond word of mouth, but I have done my best to repeat the pieces I have collected.

To other O’Culls out there who may find this, please reach out if you find more information regarding our lineage or history. I am doing my best to responsibly archive what I can. Thank you.

This Christmas the Halo: The Master Chief Collection (MCC) went on sale on Steam. When I was a kid, my parents wouldn’t let me play games rated Mature… naturally I snuck out to my buddy’s house where we played Halo and I learned to love it. A handful of times in my life I thought I’d buy an X-Box to play just Halo, but I never ended up doing it. Today, I’ve sworn off Windows altogether, making my goal even more difficult… but when MCC came out, I wasn’t going to let a handful of DirectX DLL’s stop me.

Turns out Proton 5.13 with the -windowed flag runs Halo as if it were native.

But I wanted to play with my younger brother. Last summer we found some old disks for our Original X-Box and beat Halo 1 and 2 together, naturally we had to beat 3 onward together as well… Arby’s got my back after all!

However, entering a co-op game with him lead to a disconnect about 30 seconds in. For this, I had to install Glorious Eggroll’s Proton 5.21. The installation isn’t too difficult. I then set Steam to explicitly use it in the game properties.

This fix allowed us to play co-op in Halo 3 without interruption for about an hour or so. I’ve heard rumors that you can evade the Easy Anti-Cheat by using HaloBase.net; apparently the check happens at matchmaking and nowhere else. This makes sense… Halo MCC is a fancy launcher made in Unreal Engine 4 that accesses Halo DLL’s ported from X-Box with nearly no alterations.

We have been playing with EAC disabled (this option is available when running Play from the Library – It does not appear if running from system tray).

Hope my Christmas notes help you move forward with slaying more Flood.

For awhile my brother-in-law had been motivating me to get into photography. I struggled because I wasn’t willing to commit and spend more than $100 as I’m a ruthless penny-pincher. When I heard about Dora Goodman’s fancy new 3D printable camera on r/functionalprint, I spent probably three times that in a heartbeat. Going in I knew hardly anything about photography, so what better way to learn than building a camera from scratch?

If you make an account on her site you can go to your profile and find the STL files along with a parts list in a Google doc. I won’t share these with you here since I think she wants to keep it behind her community.

The Pieces

I live in the States, so it’s a little bit more difficult (and expensive!) to come by the metric parts required to build this thing. So I’ll make your life easy and give you a list of items you’ll need off Amazon:

• M3, M4, M5 screws
• Kit including M3’s that are long enough
• Long M3 set screws
• Adapters to connect your camera to a tripod
• 2mm thick light seal foam (I actually used 1mm and ended up having to stack it)
• Some small set screws
• Shutter release
• 400 grain Sandpaper
• (Optional) Walnut veneer
• (Optional) Wood stain

You’ll also have to go on eBay and look for a Mamiya Universal Press Lens, and a Mamiya RB67 back.

I bought a Pro-SD back instead of a Pro-S back because I found them to be cheaper, more plentiful, and in better condition. If you take this route, be aware it won’t fit the standard body and will require some modifications. I recommend you print the correct modded body from the start rather than retroactively sanding a few millimeters off to make it fit like I did…

I ordered my first lens from Used Photo Pro and was happy with their service. I got the wrong lens out of a noob mistake, but their return process was excellent, and the lens I did receive was in superior condition at a great price.

I later ended up getting a Mamiya Sekor 100mm f/3.5 lens.

Assembly

Getting the metric components is honestly the hardest step. After I printed my parts, I sanded for a few hours. I used PLA plastic and found 400 grain sandpaper worked the best between the 100, 400, and 900 grains I had available.

I used Dora’s provided SVG to cut the decorative wooden panels on my dad’s laser CNC mill. I also had some wood stain on hand, and I wanted a richer color out of my veneer, so I lightly sanded (to remove any splinters) then stained it. The veneer has a 3M adhesive backing, so you can stick it right onto the body.

After I put the veneer panels onto the body, I coated each part in acrylic spray paint to protect it. Finally, I followed Dora’s assembly instructions:

You’ll want to use your light seal foam to surround the film back enclosure on the body; if light gets in it will ruin all your shots with the same effect.

The final touch is the shutter release which simply screws into the lens. It gives off a nostalgic vibe while being quite functional.

Final Product

I took some pictures with a roll of ISO 100 Kodak 120mm film my brother-in-law gifted me. Due to COVID-19, I have yet to develop it (he has the kit), but I will post those pictures when that happens.

I’ve been learning about light management too. Since this is not a digital camera and it doesn’t have a viewfinder, you have to do some math to figure out how long to expose your film. You can find a nifty app to do this for you. I found it made the process much easier and enjoyable.

Reasoning

For Christmas this year I received a Raspberry Pi 4, the new board straight out of the UK that boasts 2-3x the compute power of the last model. I’ve been wanting to take a crack at it, but I knew I wanted to ditch Raspbian, the stock OS, right away.

Why? Well, the Pi 4 is a 64-bit embedded system. Actually, the Pi 3 was also 64-bit, but Raspbian has always been a 32-bit operating system for reasons of stability and backwards compatibility… but I’m a power user! Let’s use it to it’s full potential, shall we?

For awhile I debated on installing Arch Linux ARM, but I eventually landed on Alpine Linux. It’s a prime choice for this because it’s blisteringly lightweight, offers more packages than Arch Linux ARM, has loads of packages compiled for aarch64, and the most recent version (v3.11 as of writing) added explicit support for the Pi 4. That being said, I recommend using the edge branch for the most up to date and in-testing packages.

Equipment

If you’ve never worked on a Pi before, you should check out CanaKit’s offerings. In the case of the older Pi’s, CanaKit was always a good idea because the power supply it comes with has enough amperage to keep the Pi from starving. If you use any old wall-wart PSU, you’d get a lightning bolt icon telling you that the Pi wasn’t getting enough power. In the case of the Pi 4, the USB C port is not up to spec and actually needs an even more specific PSU; if the wrong one is used, it could damage the board.

The Pi is particularly sensitive about the quality of SD card you put in it since it makes a ton of small reads and writes. A class 10, UHS 3 micro SD card is what you really want for uninterrupted performance, and it’s not even that much more expensive.

The Raspberry Pi 4 CanaKit ensures you won’t get the wrong parts, and at a great price too. It even comes with a slick case, a power switch, a quiet CPU fan, and passive coolers on top of all the stuff you must have.

The SD card reader that comes with the CanaKit is a tad subpar, however. If you find yourself frequently tinkering on SD cards, I highly recommend getting Sabrent’s USB 3.0 SD card reader. It offers superior performance, and you don’t have to struggle to remove the card every time.

Installation

Getting Alpine Linux installed on a Pi persistently isn’t a supported goal by the Alpine team yet. We’ll have to take a few detours to get this working.

Setup

Grab the tarball from Alpine’s website for Raspberry Pi (1, 2, 3, or 4) and the aarch64 architecture. Grab your SD card and format it using an MBR partition scheme (the Pi will not boot with GPT partitions). You’ll need to make two partitions:

• 500 MB, FAT32, for booting
• The rest, EXT4, for your system installation

Extract the tarball into the FAT32 partition, then add this file to the root of the partition:

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dtparam=audio=on
disable_overscan=1
dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d
gpu_mem=256

Insert the SD card, power up the Pi, and login. The default credentials are root and no password. Start up and complete a regular install using setup-alpine.

You’ll want to enable a service to automatically reconnect to the wifi network, so run rc-update add wpa_supplicant boot. We will want to commit these settings to the boot partition, so execute lbu commit -d to save them. Then reboot.

When you’re back online, we should update our system and save it: apk update && apk upgrade. Commit that once more and reboot: lbu commit -d && reboot.

Making it Persistent

The reason why persistent installations are not supported on the Pi is because ARM devices don’t use conventional BIOSes. Therefore, SYSLinux or GRUB won’t work. Instead we’re going to use our custom FAT32 boot partition (mmcblk0p1) to alleviate this problem.

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mkdir -p /mnt/system
mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /mnt/system
setup-disk -o /media/mmcblk0p1/$HOST.apkovl.tar.gz /mnt/system

You’ll probably get some warnings about SYSLinux here – ignore them.

Now we’re going to setup our mount points. Edit fstab on the system partition and add these lines:

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/dev/mmcblk0p1 /media/mmcblk0p1 vfat defaults 0 0
/media/mmcblk0p1/boot /boot none defaults,bind 0 0

In order to get the kernel to properly load up our new root filesystem, we’ll have to pass a new parameter to it. Append this to cmdline.txt after remounting with mount -o remount,rw /media/mmcblk0p1:

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<Your kernel parameters> root=/dev/mmcblk0p2

You may now reboot into your fresh system installation.

Bringing up the Desktop

Alpine actually has a little known package for quickly setting up a desktop environment, but it needs a few tweaks. The alpine-desktop metapackage includes xfce4 along with a few other tools and critical packages like xorg-server. You’ll also need to replace mdev with udev for proper input support, and install some video drivers.

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# Install desktop packages.
apk add alpine-desktop mesa-dri-vc4 mesa-dri-swrast mesa-gbm xf86-video-fbdev libinput xfce4-terminal firefox sudo
setup-xorg-base

# Add a user for yourself.
adduser -g "Max O'Cull" max 

# Uncomment this line: %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
visudo

# Add yourself to the group "wheel" for sudo access.
addgroup max wheel

Add this xorg.conf to properly connect the video drivers:

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Section "Device"
  Identifier "default"
  Driver "fbdev"
EndSection

reboot and when you log back in, run startx. You’ll notice XFCE4 is a bit sluggish. This is because the compositor is enabled and is bogging down the GPU. Under XFCE’s settings, find Window Manager Tweaks and disable compositing.

Extra Credit

Congratulations, you’ve got a full 64-bit operating system that’s extremely lightweight, with up to date packages. Maybe you’re bored of a traditional desktop? Try installing these:

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sudo apk install kodi kodi-gbm retroarch

Then running either sudo kodi or sudo retroarch (necessary to properly connect to X11 and Dbus).

Kodi

Kodi should say you’re using OpenGL ES 3.1 (under Settings > System Information > Video) if your graphics are setup correctly.

Retroarch

You’ll need to install cores to do anything useful. Normally you would go to Settings > User Interface > Views and enable Show Core Updater, however, my suspicion is that those cores are not compiled for aarch64. Instead, we’ll have to install them via APK’s:

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sudo apk add libretro-nestopia libretro-desmume libretro-mgba libretro-mupen64plus