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Summer is time for
Summer is time for grilling and Tod has fired up the barbeque three times in the past week. But last night we were hungry and didn’t feel like cooking for ourselves. Where did we end up? A Korean barbeque restaurant for indoor grilling! Kenbu Yakiniku is a catch–great food, an interesting atmosphere (half industrial, half…
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When I was a
When I was a little girl, I read a lot of fairy tales, fantasy and historical fiction. I was fascinated with the things people wore and the descriptions of women embroidering all the time. What a lot of work for clothes that we take for granted these days. Yesterday I was shopping with a friend…
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Everyone around me is
Everyone around me is publishing books. Caroline Pover, a friend of a friend, launched her new book last night. Her apartment was packed with friends, contributors, stacks of the book and lots of champagne. Being A Broad in Japan is a sourcebook for foreign women living in Japan that grew out of Caroline’s magazine and…
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For the first time
For the first time in three years, Japan’s trains let us down. We were on our way to a party in Kisarazu, Chiba prefecture (the “state” to the east of Tokyo). It’s about an hour and a half away by train, or only an hour if you catch the Sazanami express train. Kisarazu is “in…
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Peterb is in town
Peterb is in town from Pittsburgh. We haven’t seen him in five years, and all of us have been busy in the intervening years–marriage, mortgage, moving–but I think that neither he nor we have changed much. In a way, that’s very comforting. It’s nice to have a solid foundation of personality that remains immutable despite…
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If I had to
If I had to name one thing I hate about living in Japan, today I’d name bilingual computing. My Macs are generally pretty good at allowing me to display and type Japanese. But my e-mail program gives me trouble with encoding–I can receive Japanese e-mail, but I cannot send it. And after my recent upgrade…
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The city changes its
The city changes its clothes at dinnertime. Hakusan Dori, the four lane boulevard that runs through our section of town is pretty sterile during the day; the high-speed traffic doesn’t encourage many small shops and long stretches are lined with office buildings and shuttered shops. But in the evening, the metal shutters of the shops…
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I tried really hard
I tried really hard not to work yesterday and to enjoy a day of rest away from my computer. That is hard work. It was too hot (another 35 degree scorcher) to go outside for long. Everyone else in the house was engaged in solitary pursuits, like working on web pages or watching movies. I…
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Mini-digger SKR-301
9:01 am. The extremely cute, bright turquoise mini-digger (model SKR-301) is doing a balletic dance from its flatbed truck to the ground. The skilled operator uses the digging head as a fulcrum to slide the machine off the raked bed of the truck without bouncing it off the asphalt. Sadly, it is a Sunday morning….one…
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We went to see
We went to see the lanterns floating on the moat at the Imperial Palace, but we arrived to late to see them launched. They were very pretty in the twilight from the height of the moat walls, but the best view must have been with those who had rented boats and were rowing among them.…
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