Inoue Taito had never been to China before. In fact, he’d never even left Japan before now.  The noodles were different. The rice was different. The tofu was disturbingly stinky. Even the characters were different. He couldn’t understand anything.

He was homesick. So very, very homesick.

He wished his parents had never insisted on shipping him off to school here. Surely they were wrong, surely China wasn’t going to be the future global financial centre.

He wished he’d chosen art as his major instead.

Photo courtesy of mop connoisseur Jessop Petroski