"The first time I went to see a fan dance . . ." I am speaking to a colleague who is close to snapping the bones in her wrist. She is fanning her face that hard. ". . . I thought the women would be dancing ...
A snap of her wrist . . . and she has yanked back our kitchen curtains. Her eyes dart over the yard. That is, what we call a yard — a few square meters of gravel and grass that our neighbor's house now shadows ...
Socrates said his wisdom flowed from knowing he knew nothing. I can relate. Except in my case, I know almost nothing. Yet I do have one area of expertise from which my own personal wisdom floweth. That being: I am an expert on BS. I write BS. ...
Once — a dozen years or so ago — I yawned my way past a politician giving a "stump" speech to the early morning commuters at my station. In fact, I had to side-step him on the narrow walkway. Only then did I notice who ...
American poet Walt Whitman once said that if anything was sacred, the human body was sacred. But if Whitman was Japanese, he might have deemed something else more hallowed than flesh and bone. For in Japan, if anything is sacred, the hometown is sacred. Disagree? Then witness ...
Here's a short list of some of the questions I first heard in my early days in Japan, in the mid 1970s. "Can you eat sushi?" "How about natto?" "And have you ever tried salted squid guts?" (shiokara, in Japanese) The odd thing is I continue to hear ...
"You think you've got it rough?" says my wife. "How about me?" We are talking about identity. After 30 plus years in Japan, I have announced I am not sure what to call myself. This is unrelated to what I am called by others. I have ...
We could all use a good laugh. The only question is what defines "good." Below is a list of, ah, jokes. Now perhaps you will think . . . "Earthquake, tsunami, radiation . . . and now this! When will the disasters stop!?" But — don't worry. ...
This is supposed to be a humor column. But in the wake of thousands of dead, a coastline of crushed communities, the sinister threat of radioactive poisoning, and billions of dollars in losses, I feel challenged to find something funny to write about. Even though we ...
When the big one hit — at 2:46 p.m. on March 11 — I was trying to be funny. I was sitting in my office on the second floor of my home in Saitama, tapping away at the end of a draft for a future ...
