Back in the late spring of 2004 I went to Shimoda to do a little surfing. It was beautiful and a lot of fun and immediately overtook Togane, Chiba as the place in Japan I wanted to move to. The place is green, has great waves, and has the best sushi I’ve ever had (but I didn’t pay for that dinner so I’ll bet if I dropped more money I could find good sushi just about anywhere in Japan). Talking about this makes me regret not getting down there again.

I …