The other day I met this crazy lady on the train. Well, I didn't actually meet her. I only saw her. But I saw her very well. To start, I watched her stagger down the carriage as the train snaked through suburbia. Just a dumpy, everyday ...
I wish I could say, "No." I wish I knew how. Meanwhile, 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of "The Japan That Can Say No," a bestselling collection of essays penned by Sony co-founder Akio Morita and author Shintaro Ishihara, then a Diet ...
If you are a foreigner living in Japan, odds are high that language learning has played a key role in your residency. Perhaps it's provided the glue that has bound your bicultural life together. Or maybe it's been more like Tabasco. As in adding a ...
Most people don't find much humor in typhoons. But maybe that's 'cause they don't look. I mean, take away the hammering wind and torrential rain, the crippling losses to agriculture and industry, not to mention the related human tragedies that can sometimes number in the ...
There's this foreign fellow I know that when asked about his favorite place in Japan, always answers like this . . . "The departure lounge at Narita." I myself might give that very same answer — twice a year. During the school vacation months of ...
Dame Senility may one day cloak my eyes with her perplexing veils of memory gone astray, but when she does, I will be ready. For — in a way — I have been there, done that. My wife too. In fact, she met Dame Senility just ...
Recently I had coffee in the Ginza with a friend from abroad, a Japanese gentlemen making a rare pilgrimage back to the land of his upbringing. From our second-story window we gazed down upon the pizzazz of the city streets — the glistening facades of ...
What I could use in Japan is a superhero. You know, someone to help me escape my daily gaijin grind. A Spiderman, a Wonder Woman, a Harry Potter. Someone who could be my champion in life's never-ending struggles with truth, justice and cross-cultural screwups. Like ...
"Honne and tatemae" are terms that many feel are linchpinned to the Japanese psyche. The first — honne — refers to the intimate truth of the soul, one's uttermost honest feelings, the rough skin under all the powder and rouge. The second — tatemae — ...
If you live in Japan long enough, various shipwrecks of odd jobs will float your way. For example, a short while ago I was asked to do some translation work regarding . . . fish. Which is funny enough. But the bigger joke is my ...
