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Semi shigure
“Semi shigure” describes the shower of cicada song that fills the air in midsummer. It is a perfect 5 syllables, just right for haiku. Haiku, in case you’ve forgotten from your 8th grade English composition class, is a three line poem with a 5-7-5 syllable pattern. The poem must include words to invoke time, particularly…
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Another day, another realtor
Another day, another realtor The day before yesterday, I got an unexpected phone call from Yoshii-san at Relocation House who had faxed me a floorplan a couple of weeks ago. I had made an inquiry about a house through one of the realty databases on the Internet and now Yoshii-san was following up to see…
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Househunting in one syllable
Yesterday I spent 4 monosyllabic hours in a car with my realtor. Perhaps that is a slight exaggeration; I do know a words of more than one syllable which I proved by repeating them. hiroi…akarui…kitanai…semai… We visited five places yesterday. One won’t be vacated until the end of July, so we just peeked at the…
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Trash day
Trash day and I’m up early to walk it down the block to the pickup point. All the neighbors put their trash in the same place (a big pile near a stone wall by the grocery store) and the little garbage truck comes to collect it. The trucks are cute–they are bright blue with the…
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Japan Summers
The weather forecast predicts a 36 degree high today. Certainly the hottest day of summer. A good day to go meet a friend at Imojin and eat red bean ice and sip green tea. The office was 33 when I walked in this morning. Thank goodness for aircon. Tokyo summers are dreadful. June brings rain,…
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Today’s Weather in Tokyo:
Today’s Weather in Tokyo: hot and humid. (It is summer after all!)
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Bonenkai
A holiday story from the pre-blog days
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