I was walking down a back street in Sendai Japan, on my way home from seeing Casshern. It was a very typical Japanese back street, it had the vending machines, the seemingly chaotic network of cables in the air, the maps on corners to help you find adresses that would otherwise be impossible to find, the houses with single glass windows. In all, it had an abundance what I now recognize as Japaneseness. It was not late, but it was getting dark, Sunday evening. It was warm. It was raining. Rain comes in an infinite number of variations though. This was the kind that will get you damp but not wet, the kind where the air is so humid that water seems to condense out of the air around you and settle in a thin film over everything. My newly aquired waffle iron was in a box dangling in my right hand.
I was walking down this street when the very obvious hit me; I'm walking down a back street in Japan in the rain on a Sunday evening. And less obvious; this is what I came here for. Not the street in particular, nor the rain. But the fact that everything felt so very right about that street, it felt like home. Not home like my room is home, but home like the path behind Uppsala Castle with the view of downtown below is home. A feeling you can never get as a tourist.
You most likely wouldn't carry a newly aquired waffle iron as a tourist.

Casshern is worth seeing.