General

Last Christmas, I spent Christmas in Périgord, a rural area in southwestern France. It's a two-hour ride from Paris to Bordeaux on the French equivalent of the Shinkansen, followed by a local train ride and a 20-minute drive from the station—far, far from Japan. My best friend and his wife, whom I met while living in New York, live here. It was our first reunion in six years. I first met them in the freezing New York winter, at a public indoor swimming pool with almost fresh