Won't Miss #443 - "muzukashii"

I'm not sure what the most dreaded word in the English language is. It might be "audit" or, depending on your feelings about such things, "marriage" or "pregnant". The latter of those would certainly fill me with terror, though marriage for me has always been a delight. After writing this post, but before showing it to him, I asked my husband what he believed was the word we really  hated to

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Will Miss #442 - kintsuba

You can see by the illustration that my description of isn't inaccurate.


Imagine that you are walking down the street and you see miscellaneous blobs of food in different colors and someone offers you a sample and says, "here, eat this." The blob is brownish with things in it and coated in a milky white stuff and you ask what it is and they say, "just try it". Would you gleefully just stuff

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Won't Miss #442 - vacationing is difficult

I'm mentioned about a million times before that I can't speak to any other person's experiences in Japan. It's not only about the subjective nature of experience and how feelings and perceptions vary from person to person, but also how we all have different experiences. No one can live the life you live no matter how hard they try. So, when I say that "vacationing is difficult" in Japan, I'm

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Will Miss #441 - Japanese stamps

Some things become more awesome because they are unfamiliar. It's stupid, in a way, but it remains true. Stamps from most countries are pretty cool regardless of where they come from, but the kawaii (cute) and often elegant or particular nature of many Japanese designs makes them see that much more precious, beautiful or adorable (whether they are "Hello Kitty" or not). It probably helps that

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Will Miss #440 - group exercising

Shortly before my husband and I left Japan and were dealing with the hassle of getting an address change, we were led up to the super secret sorting area of the main ward post office. The time at which we were taken there was during the lunch hour and as we sat waiting for people to work out how to handle our (apparently) unreasonable request to have our mail sent to an address other than

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Won't Miss #441 - inconsistent nutrition information

Nutrition information should be standardized so that customers can operate from a common framework when dealing with food. I've been told that it is common in Europe to offer information per 100 grams. In Japan, there appears to be no standardization, even across products that are extremely similar and from the same manufacturer. Drink data, for example, is sometimes given per 100 ml. and

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Won't Miss #440 - soup slurping

This is Soup Curry from Dominika in Shinjuku. It is awesome, and unslurpable... at least until you eat all the big pieces. 


Ethnocentrism makes itself most obvious at the dinner table. It's one of the few places that people can feel 100% justified in their disapproval. It seems that humans decided a long time ago that the consumption of food must be full of rules and every culture has

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Will Miss #439 - McDonald's weird burgers

A "sakura teritama" burger. It's a ginger teriyaki pork burger with lemon sauce. The "sakura" part doesn't mean it's stuffed with cherry blossoms, but rather that there's a pale pink sauce which is supposedly infused with sakura flavor and it's like biting into spring. I'm not sure what spring tastes like, but there you go.

I try hard not to think something is strange because it suits

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Won't Miss #439 - electrical current issues

When my husband and I first came to Japan, my mother insisted on giving us a gift to take with us. It was a talking digital clock. These days, electronic devices seem to be incapable of shutting up, but 23 years ago, that was an unusual gadget. We took it with us and plugged it in. It seemed to still work, but it kept losing vast amounts of time. It seemed that the power differences between

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Will Miss #438 - business minding

I knew when I returned to America that a lot of things I'd never thought of when I was living in Japan would come to mind in terms of what I would and would not miss. One of the things that I never dreamed of being something I'd miss is the way in which Japanese people tended not to stick their nose in my business when I was going about the city. On very rare occasions, someone would walk up

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Won't Miss #438 - "power spots"

I'm all for New Age spirituality. In fact, I'm really pretty good with any spiritual belief system folks want to embrace. The thing I'm not such a fan of (besides pushing your faith onto others) is blatant expansion of a belief system in order to make a quick buck. That would include things like velvet Jesus paintings and the virgin Mary nightlights as well as power spots. The notion of

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Random Thoughts: Reverse Culture Shock

I once read an article written by a woman who spent three years in Germany and talked about how horrible it was for her to come home and face reverse culture shock. Though I don't want to engage in a reverse culture shock pissing contest, I have to say that it is hard not to snort derisively at the notion that three years in a Western culture is going to compare to the shock of returning after

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Will Miss #437 - the Edo/Tokyo Museum

A life-size life-size reproduction of an Edo-era building (that's a real person in front).


The level of indoctrination into a culture that one experiences has a profound effect on interest levels. When I was a kid, I didn't care much about museums or history because I had already been overexposed to tales of George Washington and his wooden teeth or Abraham Lincoln and his log cabin (what's

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Won't Miss #437 - "Mrs. (My Last Name)"

The confusion that Japanese people have with foreign names and first and last names is understandable given the differences in how family and first (given) names are offered in respective cultures. When students called me "Mrs. Shari", I knew why. However, there is another layer of complexity which I struggled with and my students never seemed to understand or act upon even when they actually

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Will Miss #436 - psychics

A fortune teller and her customer in a cubicle in the Nakano Broadway shopping arcade. 

There are psychics or fortune tellers in nearly every culture. The main difference is not their presence, but how they are regarded and how their presence is made. In Tokyo, psychics are a part of everyday life. They have cubicles in shopping areas, sometimes in department stores. They set up little tables

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Won't Miss #436 - cycling cell phone users

She looks like she's standing still here, but she was actually riding around with her phone glued to her ear.

I always loved the idea of people riding bicycles in a country instead of taking cars and originally, it was a great point about living in Tokyo. As the years went by though, things got to the point where both being a cyclist and encountering them became increasingly frustrating. Bike

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Will Miss #435 - fearless piracy

I can't exactly show a bunch of bits flying through a phone line, but I can show this bootleg Disney backpack.

One of the down sides to living in a foreign country, as I've mentioned before, is that you aren't in touch with the pop culture back home. It's not the least bit uncommon for me to be on a Skype call with friends or family and have people talk about how much they enjoy a T.V. show

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Won't Miss #435 - long lines (qualified)

I understand that there are long lines everywhere at popular attractions around the world. This is a given and Japan's long lines at places like Tokyo Disneyland are understandable.What is less understandable is the random long lines at little places at which there is no special product or limited supply. In the picture above, some sundry goods are being sold in front of Ito Yokado. There was

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Will Miss #434 - (special) memory cues

My first month in Japan was spent in Kita-Senju, and going there always awakens a lot of good memories.

If you could live in a place which connected you to the absolute best time of your life on a regular basis, wouldn't you want to live there? I wrote about how I originally came to Japan back in 1988 and spent a month with my then boyfriend (now husband) on a vacation which was so wonderful

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Won't Miss #434 - Sakura-flavor

When spring rolls around, which apparently is any time between February and April depending on who you speak with, the sakura-flavored food starts rolling out. Sakura means "cherry blossom", not "cherry". The taste of sakura runs the gamut, but it is often a bit on the soapy side and overly floral. It's not a bad taste really. However, it's not one that I find especially good. I would say that

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Will Miss #433 - tsukune

As part of my goodbye socializing, I went to a teppanyaki resturant with a few of my former students, now my friends. Teppanyaki, incidentally, is when meat and vegetables are prepared on a large flat grill in front of you by a skilled chef. I think it tends to be rather theatrical in America and is merely carried out with great skill in Japan. However, I'm not a big meat eater so I have

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