shashasha

I worked up to the deafening din of explosive being set off.

The place was Causeway Bay, in the downtown area of Hong Kong Island. It took some moments before I was able to recall where I was in a dark room of a cheap hotel. The explosions appeared to be firecrackers that someone was setting off, out in the back of the hotel.

It was October of 1958, and my first experience of a foreign country began thus. From that day, for one month and a half, I wandered silently, like a stray dog, through the streets of the ethnic melting pot of Hong Kong, unable to communicate with anyone most of the time.

ー Shigeichi Nagano