Japan was amazing, and the cruise gave me the opportunity to have lots of conversations with folks who attended all/most of my lecture series.  It was something I needed, after all the stress this year has thrown at me.

It was interesting going back to some of the same ports we visited last fall.  It’s amazing how quickly a place can change in the course of a year.  Last September, there was a small tea shop we visited in Shizuoka, where the owner gave us an impromptu tea ceremony and took time letting us sample various products.  After that, we had heard about the matcha shortage on the news, but it wasn’t until we returned to the same tea shop and found it completely sold out of matcha that we realized how real it is.  Of course, there might have been another ship before ours this time, with more tea aficionados making a run on the shop.  Either way, the whole vibe was different, as was the setup, with a line for tourists to do tea ceremony out in the shopping arcade street.

When you write about a place, it helps to visit more than once, watch multiple documentaries, or interview folks to get more than one perspective.  With fiction, it also deepens the experience of a place to have characters experience it in different ways.

How do you choose setting for your pieces? Do you write about places that change over time?  What do you do to “experience” a place you have created wholesale, such as a fantasy world?