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House found
We’ve been househunting for two and a half months, since the fateful day in June when our landlord told us he had to sell the house we live in now. I’ve looked at scores of floorplans and visited about two dozen house in person. We’ve finally found one to move to. The funny thing is,…
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Ahead
In many respects, Japan is far ahead of the US. Of course Japan gets all its own, best technology first. New game machines, computer models, audio innvations, are released months ahead of the US market. But Japan’s ahead in other ways, too. It is the only country I know where you can buy and consume…
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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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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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