"The nail that sticks up gets hammered down!" Most visitors to Japan end up bludgeoned with this weighty axiom early on during their stay. Sharp notions of group-centered society and the awesome pressures to conform get pounded deep into the psyche, and before long ...
Most men have but one woman in their lives, yet I am an exception. For I have oodles of women. Right here at my house. And these numbers do not include family members such as my wife and her mother, nor the most demanding female ...
John Keats once taught that beauty is truth and truth is beauty. Thus inspired, let me now present my own beautiful truth gleaned from life in Japan . . . Blessed are the "mikan"; they shall inherit the Earth. Or at the very least inherit the ...
The whole world is going to hell in a hand basket, and Japan is leading the way. That is if, like me, you equate hell with the use of cell phones. Now I think I am a progressive-minded guy. In most cases I cannot resist new ...
If you're like me, the one thing you need at the end of a long run of holidays is . . . yet another holiday. Thus, in Japan we have Coming of Age Day, which follows New Year's like a mint after a heavy meal. ...
A good beginning makes a good ending; that's my philosophy. So in a new English class I often start by instructing each student to ask me a question, ANY question. After all, time may be money, but talk is cheap, and I am always eager ...
At lunch with an old pal, I cannot help but notice the puffy bags hanging beneath his eyes. "Yeah," he groans. "I just wish they were moneybags. Why didn't somebody tell me marriage in Japan would be so expensive?" I gulp down an image of his ...
My wife has gone through "the change." No, not THAT change. "I have become," she screeches with her brows kinked in horror, "an 'o-batarian!' " For the uninitiated among you, "o-batarian" is Janglish term that fanged its way into the common vernacular well over a decade past. ...
Let's see . . . our world is writhing through some of its worst turmoil ever, the Japanese economy continues to stumble about like a man on uneven stilts, crime is up, jobs are down and the ozone layer has begun to resemble Swiss ...
After almost a quarter of a century in this land, I generally find the cliche "inscrutable Japanese" to be undeserved. For I can "scrute" them OK. Sure, the frontiers of my ignorance are ever expanding, and I routinely know much less than I claim to. ...
