The neighbour (Saigon)
The neighbour always welcomes me with a “hello teacher” greeting. I feel like I am her Chat GPT as she always had questions for me - sometimes about travel, sometimes about Japanese and Korean politics.
The neighbour and her friends run the little bars in the Japanese town. They like to have interesting topics to discuss with their patrons who were mostly Japanese, Korean, or Taiwanese businessmen or factory experts. The more topics they had to discuss, the longer they could make the guests stay. I didn’t mind the quick tuition - sometimes I used to get useful intelligence from them - the stuff their guests let slip. Once or twice, I did contemplate switching careers to industrial espionage.