LIFE IS A STREAM of endlessly meaningful moments; we can’t hold on to them, but we get to live them. Sometimes we forget to. That makes life beautiful, and also sad.

Each experience is fleeting: a hello and a goodbye.

Photos are reminders of these moments, places, people, and feelings — movement, light, particles of dust, an era and a setting; mood.

Seeking shots and angles with a camera stokes my curiosity, reminding me that these moments and what they represent — beauty in its fullest breadth — are everywhere, in everything.

I feel like a kid, running around the city with a disposable camera, immersed in the cold air, the sunlight, the clouds, the faces.

I love you, Osaka. How you glisten in the rain. The friendly smiles, the colorful clothes and boulevards of chrome.

You’ve been my light, my joy, the home of my solitary wandering.

My eyes and my heart have opened to you under unexpected snowfall and late summer light, orange autumn maple leaves, the pink guise of spring.

I often walk along the canal, Osaka’s famous Dotonbori. Beautiful thoughts flow from what this city means to me. The cityscape seems caught in film. Purple light dances upon shimmering green water. Kids take photos in the sunshine.

My jacket blows in the wind, comfortable in my skin. Sometimes I just need to be alone to battle and wander through the lights and feel the winter air.

I’m okay on my own.

Within the social realm we’re rarely who we truly are deep within our core; we’re who we want to be perceived to be.

It’s hard to even know what that is — a dance of human connection, a swaying flame of identity and norms.

When I’m alone, I’m me.

Only you know who you really are. We need the time to breathe. Both types of experiences are important, the social and the solitary. In the social we expand. In solitude we understand.

It’s in these moments of reflections, on my own and exposed to the world, when I feel I get the best of myself.

I don’t have to hide, or shy away, or be strong when it’s only me. But it’s only me, and I have to be strong. I know where I’m going, just don’t know where it is.

I’ll have a good time on the way, figuring this shit out.

Yo, Osaka, your backstreets smell like incense and ramen and I wish I could know you better, for there’s much that I don’t know but I can’t believe that you’ve been home, how much this season that I’ve grown reading notes from years long gone all I wanted was a clue of what life would become, would I make it to Japan?

It’s a wild feeling, standing on the pavement that you once sought as a dream. Who’s to say what I’m dreaming now won’t soon become reality?

I know it will; faith is fierce, fueled by positivity, no doubt will get the best of me.

Lightning storms have come and gone. You’ve seen mine and I’ve watched yours in awe. We’ve never given in. It’s the beginning of my story, and I’m glad to have started it with you, Osaka.

No better place to open this book.

It’s home, forever a part of me captured in an old grainy film like hello and goodbye.