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Mom-cycle
The Mom-cycle. Practical transportation or inhuman child torture? Tokyo is a city full of bikes. People operate them with varying levels of skill, but most cyclists are either daredevils whizzing between people and cars, or roadhogs taking over as much sidewalk as possible. Always a hazard to pedestrians, bicycles are sometimes a hazard to their…
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Kanji studies
Monbusho, the Japan’s Ministry of Education, maintains a list of kanji that must be learned in each grade from 1st through 12th. By the time you graduate from high school, you have over 1800 under your belt. Kanji are tricky. Some like tree or dog mean something when standing alone on a page. Others have…
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Who’s there?
Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Our next-door neighbor. Our next-door neighbor who? Alan. He’s Canadian. I kid you not. The man who lives on the 2nd floor of the house next door is from Canada. This comes as a bit of a shock, I will say. In six months here, we’ve never seen him even once.…
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Travel plans
Making travel plans is always a bit of a pain, but using the Internet for research and contact makes it a little bit less difficult. I have managed to get our trip to Italy sorted out almost completely online. Flights from my favorite travel agent here in Japan were booked via e-mail. I’ve got the…
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Tidbits
Tidbits from today’s paper: Mitsubishi Motor kept secret records of customer complaints so they would not have to recall their products. About half of the problems reported by customers were marked as “H” for the Japanese word himitsu which means secret, and shielded from Transport Ministry inspections. 30% of Japanese men suffer from “erectile dysfunction”…
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Summer fireworks
Summer fireworks festivals in Japan are spectacular. Last night, we watched Tamagawa challenge its rival, Kawasaki City, to a duel on the inky black battlefield of the sky. Nine of us lined up on Elizabeth Andoh’s narrow balcony to watch and keep score. Tamagawa’s show was to our right; Kawasaki was across town to our…
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Mizuhiki
When I was a little girl, I learned a craft called “paper quilling” that involved curling long thin strips of colored paper around a pin to form spirals then joining them to make patterns and pictures. The Japanese have one-upped paper quilling. The art of paper knotwork, called mizuhiki, is extraordinary. These paper cords were…
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Earthquake
Well, I was right about those earthquakes. The two on Tuesday & Wednesday paved the way for one whose epicenter was in Tokyo proper. 8-18, 4:53 Magnitude: 4.0 Location: Tokyo 23 Wards Oddly enough, nobody outside Tokyo felt it, according to Tenki’s map. Usually the effects of a quake spread a little further out. Maybe…
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Japanese e-mail
It’s taken two years, but I’ve finally found a way to send e-mail in Japanese. This is a minor triumph in my life as I belong to some groups that have a mixed membership of English and Japanese speakers. Now I can send messages that everyone can understand (if they can parse my bad Japanese…
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Obon
Ah, quiet. It’s Obon! During this mid-August week most small businesses close and many larger companies take a holiday, too. Over the weekend, 50% of Tokyo residents evacuated. Traffic jams on every highway leading out kept people stuck on the roads for hours longer than usual. Every Sinkansen was full to capacity and non-reserved express…
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