Not this Thanksgiving
How do you feel about Thanksgiving? How do you feel about Independence Day? What do you think about Easter, Memorial Day, Labor Day, even Christmas? What goes through your mind those days and weeks before they arrive? Do you even notice them as they pass by or [...]
Sometimes it's like walking up a mountain
Persistence. Here in Japan it is an essential quality and those without it quickly leave (or are somehow by buffered from reality by an unknown force and stay on for years blissfully unawares). I’m not talking about the persistence a tourist needs to find an out of the [...]
I’ve seen a lot of strange things on Japanese trains these past five years. Drunks passed out on the benches, old women (and I do mean old) dressed in school girl uniforms, ‘train parties’ where people spend hours riding around while drinking, just to name a few. But this evening as I rode home on [...]
My legs stretched out in front of me, at least as far as they could in the cramped space of a JR train. A long day of wandering around Wakayama city had had left me pretty tuckered out and in order to balance the scales I had treated myself to a nice long soak in [...]