It's fall, and there are apples all around here in the Northwest. A few years ago, I went to Japan with my mother in celebration of her birthday. My little sister happened to be living in Osaka at the time, so we had a place to stay. We travelled around and did a fair amount of sight seeing. I had lived in northern Japan as an exchange student years before, but had never been to that part of the country. At one point in the trip, we ended out in the countryside. We met many warm and friendly people (as was...