In 2004 I went on my first visit to Enoshima, Japan with one of my best friend’s older sisters. We met at the train station in Shinjuku in Tokyo. It took about an hour to find each other because my sense of direction was very poor in that big station with many exits and entrances and half-way points and her English was nonexistent. In the end we got there and I loved it. We ended the day on a pier/jetty thing where fishermen were grilling oysters while the sun was going down. I was sitting on the steps looking at the silhouette of mount Fuji and a Japanese man with a camera around his neck approached me and asked if he could take a picture of me. i usually hate pictures being taken of me but for some reason I said okay right away even though I didn’t understand his motive. He snapped a couple photos, said thank-you and handed me a four-leafed clover.

It’s 8 years later and I randomly thought of this, wondering what that picture looks like and what he did with it. It’s weird thinking about how if you just take one more step, you don’t have to be strangers anymore.