“Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend.”
― Sarah Dessen, Someone Like You
“What would you like to do first when covid restrictions are lifted?” This question frequently appears when I catch up with my friends. I always answer: “I want to visit my best friend in Indonesia.”
Haznul Zainal Tamin is Indonesian and is my best friend. If you’ve been following my blog, probably you’d recognize his name. He appeared in my blog posts a number of times with his wife and his friends. During the pre-coronavirus normal, he visited Japan as frequent as every month as a travel guide. And every time he visited Japan, we met to catch up over a meal.
And somewhere along the way, he introduced me to his newly married wife, Saras. That was almost two years ago, I guess. During the past five years, I’ve been witnessing his seasons of life and am happy for him.
Every time we met, we discussed all sorts of things, such as how he sees this world through his Islamic values, how I see this world through my eyes. Also, we always discussed our generations’ essential problems at the global level, including the retreat of democracy, climate change, and the devastating decline of basic human rights all across the world. Sometimes, our conversations took place in Starbucks, and sometimes in a Kebab cafe. Wherever it is, those places instantly became our own classroom to discuss heavy topics.
Then, came the coronavirus. Instantly, our world has changed and our pre-covid normal became a distant past. Still, we are lucky for having this Internet contraption. From last year’s September, we started to catch up online. And it eventually became our weekly discussion over all sorts of things as we did before the pandemic.
Due to the current situation, Haznul started his own YouTube channel with his friends to promote his own traveling business to Japan. His channel is called Belajar Jepang (Leaning about Japan). His channel is all about Japan from Japanese language tutorials to introductory videos of the country and everything in between.
Last week, his channel featured one of my posts from Canvas of Dreams: 2020 A Year in Review. He translated every word of my post into his native language, Indonesian, with English sub. And it was narrated by his wife, Saras. Her sweet voice made me feel some sort of a magical familiarity with their country, Indonesia. Despite the physical distance between us, we are closer than ever.
Lastly, I’m delighted with our first collaboratory project. He told me he would start a series of videos called, Dari Jepang (From Japan), and this video is the first one. In this series, he’ll feature pictures and videos taken in Japan, including mine. If you’re interested in his channel, please subscribe to it. I promise you won’t regret it.
Here is the link to Belajar Jepang
Let’s cheers to our priceless friendship without borders!
