The boy looked at me with his mouth half open

In the northern mountains of Luzon lies an area called Tinglayan. It is the sort of place unlikely to appear on any tourist map, and foreign travelers rarely set foot there. Perhaps that is why my presence seemed to strike people as something akin to spotting a rare animal. As I walked along the village path, children began to appear from nowhere. At times more than ten would gather around me. I quickly gave up trying to count them and simply let myself be surrounded as I walked. Some approached with eyes shining, others stared at me with their mouths half open. Whether out of caution or curiosity I could not tell, but it was clear enough that I was being treated as something out of the ordinary.

Luzon, incidentally, shares deep historical ties with Japan. During the war, many Japanese soldiers were stationed here, and there are even records of them struggling with the pronunciation of the local village names. But whatever shadows history might cast, the children before me regarded me with the most contemporary kind of curiosity. In the camera’s lens their faces appeared serious, almost like merchants appraising their goods. Even the village dogs gave up barking and joined the silent audience, leaving me for a moment with the odd impression that I had somehow become the newest recruit in a traveling circus.