My friend Tariq Ansari and his son Imaan, invite me to Japan—Tokyo and Kanazawa to be specific. “Join us,we’ll walk, we’ll eat, we’ll explore… we’ll experience, you can take photos… Tokyo, the big city, and Kanazawa, off the beaten track, the castle town of 400 years.” Tariq is pretty much a native of Japan, having studied in Tokyo, his Japanese is fluent—For everyone who’s been to this great nation, “There’s no country quite like it”—I concur—it is a quiet city of 14 million people, perpetually on silent mode.

Old world in its orientalism. Ornate but not opulent.There is an order that permeates day -to-day life.