My home in Japan.

My home in Japan is very small. I live in a little town called "Nakatonbetsu" in Northern Hokkaido. I have lived here for nearly 2 years now. Nakatonbetsu is nestled in a green valley blanketed in wildflowers and surrounded by rolling green hills that are capped in pearly white snow from October to May. And in summer, the land is so green one would think that forest spirits themselves might leap and frolic amongst the trees and pastures, such as in Miyazaki's film, "Princes Mononoke." From this, one might think that Nakatonbetsu is the greatest town in the world. But after almost 2 years of living here, I am almost crazy. Nakatonbetsu is very small: only about 2,000 people on a sunny day. The people in Nakatonbetsu are also very small. The average Nakatonian stands only 2 feet tall. Actually, they are all midgets. But this is okay because I love midgets. They are very cute with their squeaky little voices, and you can toss them into the air very high. But, midgets are also very shy. Unfortunately, most of the people in Nakaton are too frightened to talk with me. Many are too frightened to even look at me. This can make Nakatonbetsu a very lonely place sometimes for a non-midget foreigner living amongst a clan of shy little people. Because of this, I spend a lot of my free time in my little apartment watching television and eating chocolate, the whole while wishing that the little people of Nakatonbetsu weren't so frightened of me. If they weren't so frightened of me, Nakatonbetsu might be a wonderful place to live. Magical even! Oh, only if I weren't so lonely and such an outcast amongst these little people. I might stay in Nakatonbetsu forever. I might even marry a little midget girl and we could live in a quite little cottage surrounded by orchids and wild bamboo, spending the evenings frolicing nude in the garden like forest nymphs. It would be magical!