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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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My friend Brendan, the
My friend Brendan, the crazy proprietor (he hates it when I call him that) of Pizzakaya , recently finished looking over the entire 361 pages of my book manuscript. (Thank you, Brendan!) Now I’m going over it again, marking in more changes of my own and thinking about his comments. In addition to the expected…
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What is it with
What is it with foreigners and candy? Yesterday on the train a middle-aged Japanese woman, atypically fat and garishly dressed, sat next to me. My first thought upon seeing her unconventional appearance was “Oh, no, she’s going to try to talk to me.” I was spared that torture, but as she rose to disembark a…
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Today is a day
Today is a day when I have nothing to say. I spent all of yesterday at my desk completing a project for a client. Tod & I ate leftovers for breakfast and dinner and pretty much sat in the office and typed all day long. I didn’t even make it as far as the mailbox…
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When the doorbell rang,
When the doorbell rang, Tod was in the kitchen making coffee so I ran down to answer it. Maybe it was one of those packages we keep missing. It was a high school student, dressed in his school uniform of navy blue pants and a matching military style jacket. He explained that he was conducting…
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Yesterday was a beautiful
Yesterday was a beautiful winter day. The sky was blue, the sun shining and the air was warm. I was out running errands (mailing those Christmas packages) and decided not to head back to the office with a take-out lunch. Instead, I found myself at the Koishikawa Botanical Garden with a picnic. I sat on…
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I’m running earlier than
I’m running earlier than usual this year, but I don’t think I’m going to make it. For Christmas the past two years, gift shopping & shipping has been a last-minute, mad rush. Nearly everyone on my gift list received similar items (yukata in 98, “winter gift” in 99). They were shipped via overnight mail just…
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