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Yesterday was the last
Yesterday was the last business day of the year and most employees spent their afternoon cleaning. At the printer’s across the street, they washed and buffed the delivery trucks and the forklift. In restaurants, wait staff dusted picture frames and scrubbed all the corners that are normally overlooked. In the subways, uniformed cleaning staff halted…
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Everyday tongue twister
Although there’s no phrase for “tongue twister” in Japanese, the language has quite a few words that are challenging to say. Japanese has 5 vowel sounds (plus a few dipthongs) ah (a), ee (i), oo (u), eh (e), & oh (o). Paired with the 11 consonant sounds, this means pronunciation is very regular. Ko is…
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There are four days
There are four days left to complete the year-end cleaning. Before the new year comes, everyone in Japan cleans the slate–and the house, their accounts, broken relationships, and all the other loose ends that are dangling. It’s a great system, giving everyone a fresh start for the new year but it sure is a lot…
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It rarely gets very
It rarely gets very cold here in Tokyo, but I am glad I have a pair of gloves. Yesterday’s high was about 10 (50 F) but the temperature dropped quickly in the evening and the wind was blowing. I’m sure it didn’t dip below freezing but people on the streets last night were bundled up…
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Christmas: cookies; creativity; and
Christmas: cookies; creativity; and caffeine. I spent my Christmas morning baking an army of gingerbread men and citrus wreaths. They were beautiful and lots of fun to decorate. Each gingerbread person had a distinct personality and the accessories to prove it. My day’s plan was to bake cookies, arrange the gifts shipped from family and…
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We spent our Christmas
We spent our Christmas Eve getting into the spirit of the season. A visit to the Japan Toy Museum gave us a dose of playthings. They have 8,000 toys on display. Arranged by era and type we saw traditional wooden toys, dozens of post-war tin toys, kitchy 60’s era spaceship and robot toys (with “Mysterious…
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It’s Christmas Eve, a
It’s Christmas Eve, a big date night here in Japan. Couples have made reservations months in advance for dinner and a room at swank hotels. For the younger set, a Christmas Eve date means Kentucky Fried Chicken & an hour or two at a love hotel. A Ginza Printemps department store survey said that women…
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At one of the
At one of the busier stations on the line, there was a minor disruption in the carriage I was sitting in. Someone spoke in a loud, sharp tone, a disembodied voice carrying over the general hubbub of the crowded train. A few heads turned, curious to see who it was, but bodies blocked the view…
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The Lovely building is
The Lovely building is no more. Down on Hauksan Dori, the major thoroughfare near our house, stood a building that made me smile every time I walked by. It had a certain style, a panache that the buildings surrounding it lacked. Seven stories high, it fit in with its neighbors. Except for one feature. Running…
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Earlier this month, we
Earlier this month, we received three yellow cards from the post office in quick succession, all of them telling us that we had foreign packages to be delivered and asking us for instructions: redeliver? When? Where? When a package arrived the next day and the postman hadn’t taken the redelivery slips I’d filled in, I…
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