Ordered food delivery to my hotel in Sapporo. The driver was this older guy, probably late 50s.
When he handed me the food, he noticed I had a map of the city open on my phone. Asked in English if I was lost.
I said no, just planning tomorrow's route to see some temples.
He looked at my route and said "ah, you will miss the best one." He pointed to a temple not on any tourist map.
I asked why it's the best. He said "no tourists. Very quiet. Real Sapporo people go there."
Then he did something unexpected. He pulled out his phone and typed the address into Google Maps for me. Sent it to himself, then asked for my number and sent it to me.
"You go tomorrow morning. 7am is the best time. Tell them Tanaka sent you."
I asked if he got a commission or something. He laughed. "No, no. I just love that temple. I go every week. I want more people to see it."
I went the next morning at 7am like he said. It was beautiful. Empty. Peaceful.
The monk there said "ah, Tanaka-san sent you?" I said yes. The monk smiled. "He sends many people. He is not Buddhist, but he loves this place. Says it makes him feel calm."
The monk gave me tea and we sat in silence for a while.
When I left, I texted the delivery driver thank you. He replied: "See? I told you. Best temple."
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Details: It's the real, officially licensed NASA plush with the signature Earth-themed cap, soft sculpted design, and embroidered details.
Every time I look up at the Moon now, even the one at Space Center Houston, it feels different.
It’s no longer just a distant light in the night sky — it’s a place I’ve studied up close with my own eyes. I find myself tracing its features, recognizing the shadows, the craters, the quiet stories written across its surface.
The Moon hasn’t changed, but now when I observe it, it comes back to life in my mind with a new and treasured perspective.
Reid and Jeremy are on opposite ends of the stage. When Jeremy made his opening remarks, he said it was the farthest he’d been from Reid in some time 😂 Of course, the commander got up, walked toward Jeremy, and sat in his seat to be as physically close to him as possible 🥹
Christina Koch was a firefighter at the South Pole at -111°F before she ever applied to be an astronaut. That was maybe the fourth most interesting line on her resume. She grew up in North Carolina, got three degrees from NC State, and her first real job was building deep-space instruments at NASA.
Then she left for Antarctica. Spent three and a half years bouncing between the Arctic and Antarctic as a research scientist, including a full winter at the South Pole base. That means going months without sunlight or fresh food, with a crew of about 50 people and no way out until flights resume. While she was down there, she also joined the glacier search-and-rescue team.
After coming back, she went to Johns Hopkins and built instruments for two NASA missions (one of them is still orbiting Jupiter right now). She figured out how to start a tiny vacuum pump that NASA designed for a future Mars rover. Johns Hopkins nominated it for their Invention of the Year in 2009. Then she went back to the field. More time in Antarctica and a stretch up in Greenland. A government research station in northern Alaska, near the top of the world. Then she ran another one in American Samoa, near the equator.
In 2013, NASA selected her from 6,300 applicants. Eight people got in. Her first space mission was supposed to be a normal rotation on the International Space Station, but NASA extended it. She ended up staying 328 straight days and orbiting Earth 5,248 times, covering about 139 million miles (roughly 291 round trips to the Moon). Up there, she ran over 210 experiments, including tests of cancer drugs in zero gravity and 3D printers that can build structures close to human tissue. Six spacewalks, 42 hours floating outside the station. She learned Russian for the training. She flies supersonic jets.
Right now, Koch is on Artemis II, heading for a flyby behind the far side of the Moon. The crew launched on April 1 and is on track to travel about 252,000 miles from Earth, which would break the all-time human distance record of 248,655 miles set by Apollo 13 in 1970. That record has stood for 56 years, and it was set during a disaster that nearly killed the crew. Fred Haise, one of the Apollo 13 astronauts, is 92 now. He told Koch: "I heard you're going to break our record."
Nobody had left Earth's neighborhood since December 1972. Koch and her three crewmates are the first in 53 years, and they are coming home at about 25,000 mph. That is faster than any crewed spacecraft has ever come back through the atmosphere.