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@chadkoh — Generous with Likes ❤️

Author: Chad Kohalyk

  • Tanegashima Island: A strategic casualty

    The day we flew out of the “cosmoport” of Tanegashima, a remote island (ritō) off the southern coast of Kyushu, was actually historically significant. Not because of my presence of course.

  • “Truly Asia” Pt 2: Melaka

    “Truly Asia” Pt 2: Melaka

    Read Part 1 “Kuala Lumpur” here → It took about two and a half hours to reach Melaka from the busy bus depot in southern Kuala Lumpur. We had loaded up on snacks and sandwiches for our lunchtime departure, just liking getting the “ekiben” or packed lunches in Japan before getting on the Shinkansen for…

  • “Truly Asia” Pt 1: Kuala Lumpur

    “Truly Asia” Pt 1: Kuala Lumpur

    PREFACE: this is a whirlwind post meant to give you the tiniest sliver of context for the accompanying photos which I hope you have a spin through. They are at the bottom of the post. Back in about 2018 my wife and I started talking about living in a third country for a while. My…

  • Twitter archived

    I stopped using Twitter last December, but with the news of Twitter is restricting its API I got my butt in gear and set up my personal archive of tweets. I pulled an archive pretty much as soon as the whole dumpster fire started, and thought I would always go back at some point and…

  • Japan doubles its islands

    Japan doubles its islands

    A couple years ago, after moving to Ikijima, I introduced you all to the idea of ritō, or “remote island”. Being a “stratovolcanic archipelago” Japan has a lot more islands than you can likely name. In fact, there are 6,852 at the last official count. A few days ago, the Japan Times reported that the…

  • 1 year an Upāsaka

    1 year an Upāsaka

    Halfway through last year I described my year-long commitment as a lay devotee of Buddhism in the Thai Forest Monastery under Ajahn Sona. I completed the commitment at the end of December and was given the Pali name of Sanghapāla — “protector of the Sangha (the Buddhist community).” I use that name now when in…

  • Best of 2022

    At the very beginning of the year I created a Reading Schedule for 2022 note topped with: “Goal is 20 books. 5 Japanese books.” As I looked over the snowy countryside in Canada last January, I was thinking about how I could maintain my connection to Japan and improve my language learning from afar. I…

  • Saturday morning walks in Kyoto

    In recent weeks, as the kids sleep in on the weekend, my wife and I have been taking early morning walks around the city, hitting temples and shrines before the tourists. We chitchat while strolling along, poking around areas of the city that we have not taken the time to explore. Sometimes we talk about…

  • 1 year at Fission

    Last week I passed my first anniversary at Fission, a deep tech startup where I have been working as head of Operations. It has been an entirely positive year, and I thought I would take a moment to reflect on the reasons why.

  • Traveling the familiar

    Traveling the familiar

    When I was a kid there was a lakeside campground we went to each summer. Dad would load up the camper with beach toys and we would migrate south for a week. My cousins would met us there for a few days, but there were also these kids from other towns and cities that would…