Archives

Category: Personal Reflections
  • At the Kid’s Table

    Lucy and her mandala with Lily in the background. A selection of our drawings. Tod & I went to an oden party yesterday evening hosted by Elizabeth and Atsunori. Their apartment was filled with food and families. After chatting with the parents for a while, my introverted self decided to go color with the kids.

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  • Ringing in the New Year

    At midnight, we joined the parade of neighbours and worshippers at Denzuin temple and payed our respects. It is a beautiful temple, very rich and recently renovated. Outside there were festival booths selling warm foods and drink.  One sold a lucky opportunities to ring the giant bell. The bell started ringing at midnight, pulled 108

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  • Year of the Sheep

    Wishing you and yours a prosperous and enjoyable new year.

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  • 25 Words

    Our 25th anniversary. Eyes opened in Ireland and India to a new life together. More adventures, independence, inventiveness, alliances. Yes, yes! The ayes have it. Here are all the 25 word summaries since I started this annual project in 2001: 2013 Running away to the circus confused me. Spent ten months wondering “What next?” Tried

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  • Explore 2015

    Explore is my guide word for 2015 Choosing a word this year was tough. We are about to embark on some changes in our lives, and taking into account those plans & dreams, I ended up with over 50 candidate words. I want a word to inspire me, a theme that supports my life but

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  • Christmas 2014

    Another year, another Christmas. Tod treated me to a fancy lunch at JIMI in Ginza where we ate 50 different vegetables in 6 courses. Then we enjoyed shopping for art supplies at Itoya. The floor of colored pencils had us enraptured for about half and hour, but we didn’t buy any! We came home and

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  • Powerless

    “What would it be like if we had no electricity?” I asked at the dinner table when I was 12 or so. I’d just finished reading some history or science fiction book that had sparked the idea. We had an interesting discussion and Dad agreed that we could try turning off the power to the

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  • Girl in the Pines

    Tod has a nose for scent. He always has. He stops to smell flowers, he lights incense, and he lately collects and wears perfume. He has a lot of bottles now and seeks out the best and more rare items. It is one area in his life where he indulges himself. He makes almost every

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  • Hillhacks (in Summary)

    Tod & I just returned from Hillhacks, a tech conference for “hacking and making” in the Himalayas. It was an incredible experience for both of us. Dreams came true, doors opened, and plans formed. But I am getting ahead of the story. Ironically, the one thing that didn’t happen on this trip is what took

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  • 25 Years of Marriage

    To mark our silver anniversary, we considered having a fancy party with our friends in Japan and renewing our vows or doing something large and public. But then it dawned on us that we didn’t do that for the marriage in the first place. Why should we do it now? It’s really not our style

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