I'd lost my keys. Which is unsettling enough. For you do not begin to truly ransack your brain — where in the rising sun could they be? — until you've ransacked your house. And I mean ransack. Drawers emptied, floorboards pried, every pocket of every garment ...
Next to my house lies a carpet of land not flat enough to resist puddles and not sandy enough to attract cats. It just sits there. Empty. "Symbolic," says a friend, "of the hole in your life." He means the car I do not have. Raised amidst ...
I lay in bed with a woman with a mask on her face. So I roll her way and coo in her unmasked ear . . . "You can hide your face but not your passion." To which she sighs and coos back . . . "Oh ...
At the end of lunch with an old friend, I point out yet another hole in my Swiss cheese knowledge of Japan. "I've never really understood this whole 'Kansai/Kanto' thing. I mean, sure, I've traveled to Kyoto, Osaka and so on. But I've never figured ...
My buddy grinds his teeth and says, "You know what irks about this country?" And so I summon all the usual suspects . . . The insular mindset? The high cost of living? The crowded trains? The summer heat? "No," he hisses. "It's in baseball when guys ...
The term "man cave" has been added to the dictionary. At last. I'm referring to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, but surely those other country clubs of words and wisdom will follow suit. For once you've been welcomed by the language Vanderbilts, everyone else soon yearns to ...
"Ha ha! I can't believe it's you!" The man extends his hand as if pointing a pistol. I spin around, just to check, but there is no mistaking. The target is me. He wrenches my wrist. "How long has it been, I wonder? Years and years!" I ...
"Ha ha! I can't believe it's you!" The man extends his hand as if pointing a pistol. I spin around, just to check, but there is no mistaking. The target is me. He wrenches my wrist. "How long has it been, I wonder? Years and years!" I ...
"I see," I say. And then I say, "I see." And a few more times as well. "I see. I see. I see." "You say, 'I see,' too much," says my wife, who has been eavesdropping as I spoke with my boss via telephone — a ...
I am at this bar, see, and with me are two friends. Both have lived in Japan as long as I have, give or take, and both claim to like it here, mostly. "Mostly my eye," says my first friend. Let's call him Mutt. And Mutt ...
