New York Times writer Jonathan Zwickel discussed his recent article about tours that uncover the political and economic forces that are shaping life in Athens, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, and other important cities. Then Hiroko Yoda discussed her illuminating book about Japanese traditions, religious practices and life "Eight Million Ways to Happiness: Wisdom for Inspiration and Healing from the Heart of Japan.

Takeaways:

• Zwickel recounts his experience of wandering through an Athens neighborhood, revealing the urban decay and struggles faced by locals.
• We discuss the importance of ethical tourism, emphasizing the need for respectful engagement with local communities and their histories.
• The podcast highlights the emergence of social and political walking tours as a means to provide deeper insights into the realities of city life and its challenges.
• Additionally, we examine how these tours can serve as an antidote to overtourism by redistributing visitor traffic to underappreciated areas.
• In the second half Yoda discusses the interplay between different religious traditions in the temples of Japan; how she came to find Shinto teachings helpful while grieving the loss of her parents; and a the story behind a famous mound in Tokyo, that has a surprising history.

Links referenced in this episode:

• newyorktimes.com
• airbnb.com
• planetwonk.com

Foreign.

And welcome to the Fromer Travel Show.

I'm your host, Pauline Fromer.

There was a really intriguing article recently in the New York Times.

Its headline was Sick of Feeling like a Tourist.

There's a tour for that.

I have the author on the line.

His name is Jonathan Zwickle.

Hey Jonathan, thank you so much for appearing on the Fromer Travel Show.

Thanks for having me.

Pauline, how are you doing?

I'm doing good.

So tell me how you got the idea for this article.

The idea came from an experience I had in Athens this past summer where I had a quick sort of three night layover, basically in between some other travel that I was doing.

And because it was such a quick stop, I didn't do any research into Athens other than the information that I already had from, you know, history class in high school and maybe a little bit in college and that sort of thing and, you know, maybe bits and pieces of news and, you know, sort of updating on the sort of financial situation and just other like sort of travails that that country has been going through that have made national or international news over the past decade or so.

But really no details whatsoever.

And when I got to the neighborhood that I was staying in and exited the metro, I was kind of taken aback at the degree of, I mean, I can't think of any other word than wreckage that I was immediately surrounded by.

I was staying in a neighborhood called Petrolona and I was just sort of shocked at the ruins that I was surrounded by.

I mean like construction from the 70s or from the turn of the last century that was crumbling in total disarray with, you know, graffiti slogans like not, not mural art necessarily or, you know, sort of more artistic style of graffiti, but slogans that were mostly anti fascist or soccer, soccer team, your football team slogans.

And also plenty of like tourists go home type mottos written in Greek, which I, you know, had to photograph and then try to translate.

And I was just, I was not prepared for, I guess, just like the sort of urban decay that was so apparent to me.

And within this massive neighborhood, you know, populous neighborhood that I was staying in just seemed like that was kind of the common visual theme that I was surrounded by.

And you know, I spent the day wandering around and taking this all in and speaking with a couple Athenians, you know, just strangers that I bumped into at the bar or in the park and that sort of thing, who seemed very frustrated by the state of their city.

Their country, their government, their status on the sort of international stage.

And all of this was, like, really illuminating to me or surprising to me.

And I, in the brief time that I had in Athens, I tried to figure out, okay, how can I, how can I figure out the story here?

What's going on here?

And I was Googling around for different walking tours, you know, 90% of which are Acropolis walking tours.

Sure.

Or maybe there's, you know, Greek street food or Athenian street food tours, or there are some history tours that, you know, explore different neighborhoods and that sort of thing, but there was nothing.

There was, there's only one experience I was actually looking on Airbnb experiences specifically, and there was one that described itself as.

The tour was called Awful Athens.

Awful.

A W F U L. Oh, wow.

And I was interested in that right away.

That one wasn't available.

I ended up signing up for a similar tour with the same tour guide, and this one was called the Athens Social and Political Walking Tour.

And the, the catchphrase on the website or on, on Airbnb was how did the cradle of democracy become the basket case of Europe?

Which was exactly the question running through my mind.

So I signed up for this tour without really any, you know, sort of prior knowledge of the tour guide or the subject matter, and the next day took the tour, you know, met at the designated spot and then proceeded to wander through several different neighborhoods within the core of downtown Athens with this guide.

Mid 30s, very opinionated, super talkative, very well versed political scientist who was actually born and raised in Valencia, Spain, but had been living in Athens for over a decade.

He did some graduate study work in Athens and then ended up staying because he found this place to be such a rich sort of classroom for the kind of, you know, anthropology and political science that he's interested in.

And so he then led this tour that I was on with maybe four or five other folks with the perspective of.

And I found this to be really interesting.

Somebody who lives and is like, committed to living in the city, but also somebody who isn't from the city and is an academic and has that sort of more objective distance.

So he was clearly, like, intimate and kind of in love with Athens, but also had a little bit more of a clinical understanding of the politics and sort of the social ills that had befallen the city in the last, like, really, he kept the, the history confined within 150 years or so, which, you know, in like, American terms, that's a, that's, that's like a lot of history in Greek terms, that's just sort of turning a page backwards basically.

You know, it's just a blip, right?

It had been under Ottoman rule for four or five hundred years before that, and then basically began its process of joining the rest of Europe.

Today there are 4 million.

So, like, within that span, you know, the population, just the size of the city has grown immensely without any of the infrastructure to properly keep up or like, without the oversight.

When it came to construction during some of these immigration booms that led to these really sort of poorly built neighborhoods and roads and, you know, all of the sort of wreckage that I was seeing, you know, as a result of this sort of rapid expansion.

And, you know, we went through a couple different neighborhoods that I probably would not have either thought of going to or considered safe to go to had I, like sort of stumbled into them.

And, you know, at no point was he.

I never felt like he was exploiting any of the people that were maybe living on the margins that we were seeing.

He wasn't talking about individuals, he was talking about systems and systemic problems and policy problems.

And it felt.

It was so illuminating to me to hear this perspective after.

You know, he was really good at answering questions.

You know, he's full of information, a very opinionated guy.

And.

And, you know, it became clear that he was offering a sort of counter narrative and perhaps an extreme counter narrative to the more popular.

This is Athens, you know, tourism bureau kind of guidebook version of Athens.

Now, don't say that you're talking to the guidebook queen, but yeah, that's fair.

We try to be as open.

And it's interesting because, I mean, you said he did this without being exploitive.

And that was going to be a question of mine because I remember maybe a decade ago, people started doing tours of the favelas of Rio and it was dubbed Poor ism.

P O O R ism.

And there was.

It was controversial because people thought, is it okay to go and look at people who are struggling to gawk basically as tourists?

Is that an ethical thing to do?

It sounds like this was ethical, though.

It felt that way to me.

And I was super sensitive to that potential tension.

You know, once the tour got underway, it didn't really enter my mind necessarily Just from reading the description.

But once we were walking through, like, the Bangladeshi immigrant neighborhood, which is probably not a place I would have gone, but it was, you know, but there we were, and there were guys that were, like, in a doorway that were shelling betel nuts and, and that, you know, so that they could shoot, like, things that I had never really seen before.

And, you know, Isaac the guide was, you know, saying hello and talking with them in Greek and, you know, making sure that he was engaging.

It didn't seem, I never felt like we had just sort of parachuted in and we were, we were gawking.

It was more of a bit more of an immersive experience.

And Isaac, the guide was being as mindful as possible.

I think about describing the economics and the sort of systemic problems or the systemic reasons for these neighborhoods existing as they do, rather than pointing out any kind of individual problems or.

And in fact, like, after I spoke with him after the tour, he said that he, you know, there are sometimes there are folks that join the tour and they, they want to see somebody smoking fentanyl in a doorway or whatever, you know, the, the red light district.

And he doesn't, he doesn't want to be the guy that's going to take you there.

And that's just not part of what his, of his program.

And, you know, after three hours of this, like, you know, pulling back the curtain, so to speak, I just felt so kind of raw and fully informed in a way that I don't think I could have been by reading the guidebook or by, you know, just sort of trying to find my own way through the city.

I, you know, I was dumbstruck.

And interestingly, this isn't just in Athens.

I mean, you opened up the article to show that these types of tours are being done elsewhere, right?

That's correct.

Yeah.

So Isaac, the tour guide in Athens, is an entrepreneur, and he is expanding this concept and his company to different cities around the world.

I think nine different cities, including Mexico City and Manila and Sri Lanka.

I want to.

I think Rio was one of them.

Rio is another one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't.

I don't remember all of them, but he's intentionally choosing cities that are kind of politically fraught right now, where I think one could travel to and have a perfectly blissful beach vacation.

Or if it is more your want to find out a little bit more about the way people there are living and the struggles that they're going through, you could opt for one of these social and political tours.

Right.

And so Yeah, I ended up speaking with his counterpart or guy that he works with in Mexico City, who is a federally credentialed tour guide and have been doing that work for a few years.

And he said when he saw Isaac's post, like, basically a want ad on LinkedIn for a tour guide who was interested in political science, interested in activism and community building and, you know, the problems behind the city that they live in.

He said it never even occurred to him that such a tour could exist.

That, you know, from the sort of experience that he had and the training that he had from the Federal Accreditation Bureau, you know, they're rather strict about the information that they are hoping their guides will impart.

And so, of course, there's nothing about the, you know, political corruption in Mexico City, the history of activism in Mexico City.

And those are things that Gustavo, that guide, is very personally interested in.

And so the idea of being able to bring those personal interests and these sort of more charged stories into the guide work that he does was, you know, I mean, he was immediately turned on by that idea.

And so he's now doing these similar tours in Mexico City.

And again, there's those other cities that we mentioned and others.

If you visit the Planet Walk website, you can see the full sort of rundown of where they operate.

So it's called Planet Walk.

Planet Wonk, as in wonky.

Yeah, it's wonky.

Planet Wonk.

Okay, that's good.

And, you know, it is interesting because Mexico City is a place where it's being inundated by tourists right now.

It's gotten very, very popular, as have many of the others on the list.

And people only go to the same places on this narrow tourist track.

And that may be why in Athens, you have the tourists go home, you know, notes.

They're not spending money at the local mom and pop places.

They're not adding to the life of Athens.

They're detracting from it by wearing this groove in one part of the city.

And so that's something else these tours, I would think are doing, right?

I. I think absolutely, yes.

And I do think that that is, you know, one among many potential antidotes for over tourism is.

Is spreading the load, right?

Like, sort of distributing the visitors to these cities over a broader area because you're, I mean, like, wearing a groove.

That's a perfect analogy because you see people that have a TikTok checklist or whatever it is of the sites that they're supposed to see, the foods that they're supposed to eat, and there's going to be a line at every one of those sites, everywhere you go.

And if.

And so of course, that creates a burden, and it does.

While it burdens those businesses, it also takes business away from others, like you're saying.

And if, you know, we were more intentional in our travels or in our guiding around sending people to less traveled places, then I think we would start alleviating some of that over tourism burden.

Yeah, definitely.

Definitely.

Well, it's a fascinating article.

It's been great speaking with you.

Thank you so much for appearing on the Fromer Travel show.

It's been my pleasure.

If you listen to this podcast, you know that one of my favorite countries is Japan.

And so even though we discussed Japan a couple of weeks back, I read the most enlightening, delightful book and I had to discuss Japan again.

The book is called 8 Million Ways to Wisdom for Inspiration and Healing from the Heart of Japan.

I have the author on the line.

She is Hiroko Yoda.

Hey, Hiroko.

Thank you so much for A writing this book and B agreeing to speak with me.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for inviting me.

And then also thank you so much that, you know, you read my book.

Oh, absolutely.

And you know, I know that the book is meant to be almost like a book of philosophy, although you do weave it with your own personal story which brings it to life.

But I thought this book would be very helpful for people who are going to Japan and want to just better understand the what they see when they're there, the culture and the philosophy of the people who live there.

It wasn't meant as a guidebook, but I think it could work.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

My book, I think it has so many aspects.

It could be, as you said, it could be a guidebook.

It could be educational book to learn about my culture, Japanese culture and tradition.

And also my book is.

It's about my personal journey to re engage with my spiritual traditions after my mother passing.

So it is also like a healing journey myself.

And also through my journey, I learned that even though I re experienced the Japanese spiritual traditions, I learned that there actually are so many things that are not just relevant to Japanese people.

Sure.

But also relevant to anybody with any background.

And that is precisely why, even though the English is my four language, I wrote it in English and I published a book in America, the Tiny Reparation Books.

I don't think anybody reading this would not know that English wasn't your first language.

I mean, it reads incredibly fluently.

You laugh.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

So let's start with the title.

Why is it 8 million ways to Happiness?

That's a very specific number.

Yes.

Well, there's a concept called yaoyorozu no kami, and kami means spiritual beings in English.

So yaoyorozu no kami means 8 million spiritual beings.

And the 8 million here, it's not exact number.

It simply means many or infinite.

Infinite number.

In times of old, the Japanese people thought that everything surrounding them has spirits.

The sun, the moon, clouds, river, ocean.

I mean everything.

But also there are coming of plague, coming of poverty, there is kami of even toothache.

So that doesn't mean that they venerated those bad, bad things, but they, they recognize they exist.

No matter how much they, you know, they wish they did, you know, those bad things don't exist.

They are there.

All the kami, the spiritual beings are equal in existence.

It reminds us, you know, even though you feel bad or good, it's there so we can deal with it.

That idea is still pretty much active today.

So the reasons on why so I called it 8 million ways to Happiness is because, you know, if.

If there is an infinite number of spirits out there, there is an infinite number of ways to find the spiritual path to happiness.

And through my journey, I found my own path.

I built, I call it a spiritual toolbox.

From what I learned, everyone has a different challenges.

And then I believe that everybody can find their own way through them.

And that's the idea.

Huh?

But let me say at this point, you didn't write this book to proselytize or to convert people to the Japanese way of looking at religion.

In fact, you start with the fact that the Japanese don't consider themselves religious at all.

And which came as a shock to me because when I've been in Japan, all you see are shrine after temple after shrine.

And so I was there under the assumption that this was a deeply religious people.

But maybe that assumption comes from the fact that I come from the West.

So I see ties to religions very differently than the Japanese do.

Can you talk a little bit about the Japanese relationship to the several religions that exist in Japan?

Yes, Japanese spirituality coexist with the modern society in a different way from religion does in America.

Spirituality to us are not a dogma.

And from my experience in America, the faith is a big commitment.

But for Japanese, we don't see that way.

We actually freely switching from one tradition to the other without any commitment.

So, yeah, it's interesting that you came to Japan and then they talk about tell to me that the shrines and temples.

There are three times more temples and shrines than convenience store.

Wow.

And you know how uvicitous the convenience store are, so.

Oh yeah.

And in many of them, many of the temples and the shrines are open to.

To public.

Anyone can go in, visitors are left to themselves and so long as they.

They act in respectful manner.

So it's a dividing lines.

Dividing line is spirituality.

It's very blurred in Japan.

Right.

Because when Buddhism came in, that came in on top of Shintoism, which already existed in Japan, but one didn't wipe out the other.

A lot of people consider themselves, you say Shinto at birth, Christian at marriage and Buddhist at death.

We can go into that later.

But it's a very distinct mindset.

You can believe and not believe.

Like you go into a whole chapter about how just for fun, often you will go and have your fortune told at a temple and yet you don't really believe that this is going to be definitive about what your future holds.

So it's a kind of a looser or a more dancing, more graceful tie to traditions and religions.

Is that fair to say?

Yes.

It's basically simply put and radically inclusive.

It's interesting that you call it the Shintoism, the Shintoist.

I'd like to talk about that.

Oh, please.

Yes.

You know, I'm not sure all of our listeners, in fact, I'm not sure I understood what Shintoism was before reading your book.

There's a reason why we call or it's called Shinto.

It's in English, it's the way of kami.

So it's the way.

So that means it's lifestyle.

So it's a worldview.

So at the very beginning I explained the concept of yaoyorozu no kami.

Eight million spiritual beings, that is, you know, that term is from Shinto, but it's actually much bigger than that.

It's.

It's our worldview and it's a foundation of the Japanese culture.

So if people ask me if I am a Shintoist, I would say no, and instead I would say I'm Japanese.

But.

But having said that, I have to admit that a situation like this, that my answer, I'm Japanese, it's not enough.

That's how I feel.

It doesn't capture the Japanese spirituality, including Shinto, the way Okami can provide.

Because it's a worldview.

Yes.

And you start out the book by talking very movingly about the death of your mother at a relatively.

She died at a relatively young age and going out and taking walks and communing with the Kami was what helped you get through that very dark period.

How specifically did that Shinto worldview help you?

Okay, so the very beginning, or I didn't recognize even Shinto or Kami or anything like that.

The very beginning, I was just dark period.

So I started walking my neighborhood park and I couldn't do anything.

I just walked down then and just came back and cried.

And I just.

Every day I did that.

Gradually I started looking forward instead of looking down, and I started looking up.

And then I.

Because I was all by myself, I started paying attention.

What's happening surrounding me.

So, you know, there's an insect walking on the ground.

It was autumn, so that, you know, every day the color changes from the trees and then some, you know, sometimes it's bright blue sky.

And so I realized I was like, wow, I'm not alone.

Actually, I belong to something big, Much, much bigger thing, which is nature.

And the Kami are avatars.

Kami belongs to nature and in the heart.

And that realization was the beginning of my healing process, you know.

And then I started re questioning myself, especially with the spiritual traditions, because shrines and temples are everywhere.

I always go just to check them out and pray or be balanced myself or my parents death.

Well, then I just go there and have a quiet time.

But why am I doing this?

Nobody taught me.

And that was the beginning.

And then I started defining, okay, what kami are, what are they?

Or what Shinto mean to the vast majority of people.

Or what's the Buddhism, what's the Shugendo?

There are three major belief systems.

Shinto, Buddhism and Shugendo.

So let's say you're in Japan.

What do people take away from a shrine or from a temple?

What are the parts of it physically?

So people who go to Japan can understand better what those spaces are supposed to mean.

The most iconic figure construction is a gate, the Shinto Gate.

We call it Torii.

Tori Shinto Torii Gate.

It has two pillars and two bars atop.

There are, you know, there are minor variations, but in the shape, you know, like the Santori gate are bright red colors.

Some Tori gates made of stone.

But end of the.

The shape is basically pretty much the same.

So if you find Torii Gate and you are standing in front of the Shinto shrine, the Shinto shrine sacred area.

But the thing is, like I said before, in my country, Japanese spirituality is the dividing lines are very blurred.

So you often see find that Shinto shrine right next to Buddhist temple or Shinto shrine inside of the Buddhist Temple, the property of Buddhist temple.

So in, you know, in Japan, the Shinto kami and then the Buddhist, the deities are resigned side by side, cool.

At it peacefully.

Right.

And then there's something called Shugendo, which is a mountain religion.

Is that a fair thing to say?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

See, once again, it's very difficult for me to say religion.

Buddhism is a religion.

Shugendo.

It's just like Shinto.

It's the way.

The way of literally means the way of gaining power.

This sounds kind of a, you know, crazy, but basically way of gaining power.

Power, yes.

But the power to yourself, you know, to inner journey is more spiritual things.

The Shigendo is a hybrid of Shinto Buddhism and other belief systems.

And then centering on the mountains, venerating mountains.

Shigendo gives, in my understanding.

And that is, you know, that is my interpretation as a.

As a.

As a layperson.

The Shigendo gives a perspective that there is a.

There might be a spiritual realm out there, but that place, it might be closer than you think.

And using mountains as a metaphor, and that's shugendo.

So how will the visitor come into contact with shugendo?

Or will they.

Or does it really just tell them about how the Japanese feel about their mountains?

And it's a very mountainous country because it's a country that's had a lot of earthquakes and a lot of pushing up of huge rocks.

Yeah.

Japan is actually 70, 75% of Japanese land is mountains.

Yeah.

So mountains are everywhere.

And so it's.

Yes.

Anyway.

Yes, you can interact with Shugendo practitioners because they are temples, Shigendo temples.

So, you know, you can probably ask and then the questions, you know, then probably there will be happy answer.

Before I let you go, I want you to tell us the story of Masicado.

Because it was such a fascinating story and I think it will make people's visits to Tokyo richer.

Who was Masakado and why was it such bad luck to disturb the mound of Masakado?

Okay.

Masakado's name, actual name is Taira.

No, Masakado.

Masakado from Taira clan.

He is an actual person, historical person.

He was charismatic warrior.

He lived in the 10th century.

He organized people and fought against the Emperor.

But he lost and he got executed at the river bank in Kyoto.

That's the story.

But what is interesting about him is that the legend after he passed away.

Okay, yeah.

So he was decapitated in Kyoto, but his head was pretty much alive.

And then one day he saw himself.

I will fight again.

I will come back.

His head flew.

Flew away and it landed to the ground.

Which is where.

Which is Tokyo today.

It flew over Japan to a flashing plane from Kyoto.

Kyoto.

Kyoto to Tokyo.

Right.

But it was Edo in that time, right?

Yes, yes.

So not even Edo.

It's just.

Even.

It's just the middle of nowhere.

And then turn in Edo and then in Tokyo.

So it's.

We talk anybody thousand years ago.

Right, Right.

So the people built the grave for it.

For the.

For the.

You know, for the Masakado.

And then that's, you know, that's the Masakado's.

The mound.

So his head is under the mound.

Just the head.

Yes, yes.

Because that's all that flew.

Yes, yes.

And the thing is, that area is a prime land.

I mean, in the center of Tokyo.

The Imperial Palace.

It's a couple blocks away.

So authorities tried to move that place several times, but for some reason there's been accidents.

And then.

So just people decided to leave it as is.

Right?

Well, the accidents are fascinating.

You know, the man who decides to move it, he ends up dead in a week.

And then the Americans come in after World War II.

They want to build a parking lot and an earthquake.

No, no.

And everybody else dies.

And then when they try to build the subway line, earthquakes happen.

Yes, yes.

Lots of accidents.

Yes.

The reasons why the people, including myself, love Masakado and then also venerate as a spiritual being.

Just because there's a concept called hangan biki.

It's a.

It's a sympathy for tragic heroes.

And we Japanese tends to.

To love the passionate underdogs.

And then Masakado is one of them.

So even though he.

He lost, he lost.

But you know, it's like, wow, he tried.

And then it all.

He made all the best of the best.

And then we respect that.

Yeah.

So you call it.

In the book, you say the nobility of failure.

Yes.

Which is a beautiful phrase.

Yes.

Because everybody can associate that maybe you have a goal.

And then, you know, it's like.

And you try really hard, you know.

But even if you don't make it.

But still, the experience you have or the, you know, the courage you had means something.

So.

So.

Yes.

Can people still see the mound today?

I do, I do.

I do too.

And then.

So the.

The locate that it.

The mound is located in it, in the center of Tokyo, in Marunouchi.

It's really close to the Tokyo station.

And it's surrounded by giant buildings.

I mean, I know the skyscrapers.

And it's like.

It's a It's a shrine.

It's like a shrine.

And a lot of people go there quietly and then show respect and pray and including myself.

It's fascinating character.

Yes.

I love that story.

Yes, absolutely.

The flying head put on a spike and it says, to hell with you.

And it takes off.

Yeah.

Another reason I'd like to say about Masakado is that it said how to deal with anger.

And the sense of anger is everybody's, you know, everybody's subject too.

I realized anger is hard to deal with, but it's part of us.

It's part of the emotions.

And so.

So Masakado is kind of.

I think it's a symbol of that.

Anger doesn't disappear, it just exists.

But it's part of you.

So it.

It comes out.

But you face it.

You can tame it.

You take it, accept it, venerate it, it doesn't matter, but you can tame it.

That is my takeaway from Max Masakado Mound.

And that's why time to time, I go visit and then show my respect.

And it showed this gratitude to teach me my life lesson.

I do that.

As you can probably tell, that the Japanese spirituality isn't really about Japan thing.

It is about the cultivating positivity in your life, expressing the gratitude for whatever you're thankful for, or nourishing the sense of belongingness to the bigger system, which is nature.

And that thing is not.

It's something that I can share to anyone.

And that is why I wrote a book in English.

Well, we are grateful that you did.

Thank you so, so much for this conversation and the wonderful book.

Thank you so much.

Sour candy on the table Lazy afternoons in your sweatpants Watching cable well it feels so far away all the channels seem the same Trying to remember all the songs we like to play Cuz those lazy afternoons don't come so frequently these days oh it's been so long and I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home?

I like you with your sour candy in the boat house on the oh but I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it takes I can't get you off of my mind Looking out the window where we, we spent so much of our time Cause I miss the way it felt But I guess you can't control those damn cards we're down, babe.

I know the both of us are happy when we're free but would it be so hard to find your freedom here with me?

Wow, it's been so long and I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home I like you with your sour candy in the boat house on the lake But I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate I hate the way it takes and I hate the way it takes But I love.