Won't Miss #44 - filing 2 tax returns (reflection)

For the first decade plus in Japan, I didn't file any tax returns at all. I didn't do this in complete defiance of the law. It was an act of pure ignorance. It wasn't until one of my coworkers pointed out to me that it's written right there in my passport that I am obliged to file returns in the U.S. that I learned that I had to do so despite not making any money there. And I've already

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Will Miss #43 - liberal ideas on birth control (reflection)

I don't know if there are programs in Japan in which high schools distribute free condoms to teens to control unwanted pregnancy and the spread of disease. I am pretty sure, though clearly I cannot be certain, that such programs would not be debated based on religious concerns if they were proposed. They almost certainly be pondered in terms of expense (who pays) and the potential

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Random Memories: First Christmas Meal in Japan

I think this had to be our second Christmas in Tokyo. The T.V. was tiny so it had to be early on, but there were too many decorations for it to be the first one.  There were also too many videos in the cabinet for it to be within 7 months of our having moved there.

I will be returning next week to my "Tales From a Japanese Office" saga, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up to go

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Won't Miss #531 - being an observer (the bad)

I had a conversation with one of my friends recently in which she said that she had a problem with objectifying people. For those of you who see that as a somewhat ambiguous or too psychological term, I'll say that it has to do with dealing with people as if they were things for you to operate upon rather than people.

The truth is that I am also guilty of this, though I'm very aware of it

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Will Miss #531 - being an observer (the good)

When I first came back to the U.S., I felt completely outside of the culture. When people around me spoke to me, I felt as if they were invading some invisible bubble of privacy that they should have detected and respected. I felt this way because, in Japan, I spent so many years being an outsider who was observing from a sense of separate space and a unique perspective that it felt odd to

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Random Thoughts: How the other .2% lives

(please note that my series of memories from my former office job will continue next week)

Since returning to the U.S., I've been trying to reacquint myself with aspects of the American psyche via various outlets including magazines. This is one of the easiest ways to get an idea of how marketers perceive people as well as how information is organized and grouped for audiences who do not

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Won't Miss #43 - girly mags everywhere (reflection)

I lived in an enormous city in Japan so take this observation with an appropriate quantity of salt, but I have not seen much in the way of porn in my environment since returning to the U.S. Keep in mind that I have walked around San Francisco - even some of the seedier areas - but I haven't perused any red light districts. It does not appear to be common here for men to openly read their

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Will Miss #42 - fine bean cakes (reflection)

In terms of shopping for Japanese food, I actually landed in an area as close to "paradise" outside of Tokyo as one can get. It turns out that there are quite a few Asian markets within driving range of my current apartment and I can buy more things than I ever dreamed of. That is not to say that I can get anything I want or that I can score some of my favorites from Japan, but I can get far,

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Random Memories #58

This is part of an ongoing series that I've been doing about my memories of working at the same place for 12 years. The other parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16.

As I mentioned in the previous post, a former coworker of mine from Nova just so happened to move in when the new boss took over. This fellow, Steve, wasn't just "any" coworker, he was notorious

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Won't Miss #531 - dyed hair

When I was growing up, I didn't see my maternal grandmother with gray hair until the end of her life when she was too ill to leave the house to do anything except go to the hospital. I recall her as having extremely pale skin which got paler as she grew older and very black hair. Compared to my paternal grandmother, who let her natural aging process run its course, my mother's mother always

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Will Miss #530 - male pattern baldness

OK, I realize this is going to be a weird one, but it does say something about Japan and America. In the U.S., I see an inordinate number of men with shaved heads. Why? Well, some of them actually look great with a smooth head - like Avery Brooks looked much better without hair than with it (and he actually had a full head of hair). Most of the men I see*, however, are trying to hide their

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Random Memories #57

This is part of an ongoing series that I've been doing about my memories of working at the same place for 12 years. The other parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

Before I went off on an extended tangent about my coworkers, I had mentioned that the company I had been working at, the darling of Mr. O., had been sold to someone who couldn't recognize a pig in a

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Won't Miss #42 - Disney Obsession (reflection)

It's hard to understand the aggregate effect of a trend or fad until you find yourself removed from it and encountering a relatively different one. In Japan, it was not the least bit uncommon for adults to festoon themselves with the vestiges of cuteness. From "Hello Kitty" to "Rilakkuma" (relax bear) to Minnie Mouse, you'd find women ages 20-40 with trinkets attached to their cell phones,

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Will Miss #41 - no tipping (reflection)

We don't think too carefully about it, but many things in life are about power. Why do people prefer to be attractive to being unattractive? It's not because of vanity in most cases, but rather because beauty gives them power over others. Why do we want money? It's not because a pocket full of cash is intrinsically satisfying. It's about the power to get what you want.

The whole point of

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Random Thoughts: On self-praise and the lack thereof

This is another brief step off the path of my tales from my former employment. They'll be back next week. Thanks for your patience and for reading!

One of my friends here in the U.S. believes she is great at counseling people. In fact, she is lacking in empathy and listening skills. She's competitive in all areas, but especially in terms of how she believes she has suffered more than anyone

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Won't Miss #530 - sublimating my opinions

During the many goodbye gatherings that I took part in as I was preparing to leave Japan, I went out to dinner with two of my students who are sisters. During this meal, one of them said to me that she realized that the teacher me wasn't the real me. It was only at this little goodbye that she realized there was a whole other person who she had no exposure to.

One of the things I decided

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Will Miss #529 - rule followers, rule enforcement

There are interesting contradictions in all cultures. One in Japan is that they expect people to follow "rules" even when they are not in writing or something that people are not contractually bound to do. At the station, personnel will be organizing people into lines, telling them where not to stand, and generally ensuring order even though nothing compels them to do so. Of course, people

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Random Memories #56

This is part of an ongoing series that I've been doing about my memories of working at the same place for 12 years. The other parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.

It was much easier getting to know foreign coworkers than the Japanese ones for a variety of reasons. The primary one may seem to be language, but it was far from the most limiting one. The main issue was

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Won't Miss #40 - small refrigerator (reflection)

This was when the refrigerator was new. It didn't stay like this for long. Trust me.


I think that there are some things in life that you will always stretch to fit and then exceed the initial capacity. Closets are one of them. Blue jeans, unfortunately, are another. Refrigerators are as well.



In Japan, our refrigerator was quite small. Our first one was dorm-size-ish. Our second and

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Will Miss #39 - dressing up for the girls (reflection)

Last weekend, my husband and I walked around a local mall and I made a conscious effort to not sleepwalk through the experience. When we first returned, I took note of people and what they did and how they looked because I was trying to acclimate to the culture again. Over time, I've come to do what most people do - tune everyone out.

I'm not sure why I decided to attend to what I was seeing

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Random Memories #55

This is part of an ongoing series that I've been doing about my memories of working at the same place for 12 years. The other parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

Given the parade of temps, there are going to be a lot of people who I won't write about in detail, but I do recall a fair bit about certain ones and would like to note what I remember here briefly. This forum

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Won't Miss #529 - lack of diversity

Japan has a rich culture with a lot of variety and history. In fact, you could not really understand every nook and cranny of what it has to offer even if you had a lifetime to explore it. What is more, much of the culture has been adapted from other cultures - Chinese and European ones in particular - so there is a bit of a crazy quilt going on. That being said, it is one unified quilt and

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Will Miss #528 - the extra mile

I used to receive an actual newspaper when I was living in Tokyo. When it rained, the paper always was delivered in a plastic bag. This is not too far outside of the realm of reasonable service, but I found that there were other areas in which care was taken that I'm not noticing happening here in the U.S. In particular, when a parcel arrived damaged via the Japanese post office, they would

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Random Memories #54

This is part of an ongoing series that I've been doing about my memories of working at the same place for 12 years. The other parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

There are some people out there who have a reflexive response to explain away the bad behaviors of other people. If someone behaves rudely, they'll say, "oh, he's just had a bad day". There are others who never

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Won't Miss #39 - walking to shops, the pain (reflection)

While living in Japan, I got used to schlepping around a heavy backpack when I went shopping. Things were generally pretty small, but there were times when I'd go to the local Utakaraya market and buy a small melon, a package of chicken, a liter of milk, a head of lettuce, and four bottles of soda and find that my pack suddenly weighed as much as what felt like a couple of bowling balls.

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Will Miss #38 - free Krispy Kreme donuts in line (reflection)

While waiting in long lines at Krispy Kreme in Japan, someone would often come out and hand a free fresh donut to folks in line. I thought that was pretty cool in Japan because it was not common to receive things for free. I didn't know that, in America, getting things for free is far more common and that what you can get is much, much bigger.

Since coming back, I've discovered that you can

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Random Memories #53

This is part of an ongoing series that I've been doing about my memories of working at the same place for 12 years. This is a continuing series talking about the time I spent working in a Japanese office. The other parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

After my final "permanent" coworker flew the coop, I spent most of the time as the sole instructor at the company. It was just

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Won't Miss #528 - monaka

There are chestnuts on the package. I'd probably consider this even though it is monaka.


"Monaka" is often described as filling, usually sweetened beans, inside of a "wafer". I don't know about you, but when I think of a wafer, I envision sugar wafers with their light crispy blandness providing texture to evil creamy filling. I don't think of something which resembles thin Styrofoam packing

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Will Miss #527 - it's okay to be average

There are some aspects to life in Japan which are hard to capture with words, and this is going to be one of them. They are nuanced, but there are a lot of them and the aggregate effect creates a profound difference in behavior and quality of life.

Children growing up in America are often told that they can do anything, be anybody, and make anything of their lives if they try hard enough.

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Random Thoughts: Confirmation Bias

The presence of this gun and military shop in Tokyo indicates that the Japanese are violent people who love guns and implements of destruction, right? We can judge people by the items in stores, correct? If they didn't sell, such shops wouldn't exist! Is this not logical thinking? Perhaps not... Whether you believe this or not depends on your confirmation bias regarding Japanese people.

I'm

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Will Miss #36 - Japanese peaches

Ozzy Osbourne once talked about how he didn't understand the need for lavish Christmases with lots of gifts. He said that, when he was a kid, they got a stocking with an orange and a few walnuts in it. Those of us who grew up in a global age (or close to the coming of it) may see a child who receives such things as one step removed from getting a lump of coal. The truth is that, in the past,

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Won't Miss #35 - not having a proper oven (reflection)

My "old" oven in Tokyo when it was brand new. I gave it to a student when I left and now she uses it.

Since coming back to the U.S., I have tried not to take the advantages that I have living here for granted, but this one, having a "proper" oven, is one that I've so eased into that I'd forgotten that things were once quite different. You'd think that every time I make a big clay pot chicken

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Random Memories #52

This is part of an ongoing series that I've been doing about my memories of working at the same place for 12 years. This is a continuing series talking about the time I spent working in a Japanese office. The other parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

As the company's fortunes continued to decline, the necessity of having a third full-time employee started to diminish. When Amelia

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Won't Miss #527 - international one-upmanship

As many readers of this blog may know, I am not a fan of talk of "better" or "worse". It is my opinion that all positive aspects of a culture carry a companion negative aspect. To speak of one culture as "better" than another is to betray an ignorance of the culture as a whole. The structure and predictability of Japanese culture which brings a sense of stability, continuity, and comforting

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Will Miss #526 - no drug debate

Twenty-five years ago, I told my future husband that I objected to drug use. At that time, he thought I was being judgmental, moralistic, and small-minded because that's why most people have an issue with it. The truth is that my objection has nothing to do with morality. It has to do with what is often referred to as "presence". That is, when I am with people, I want them to be mentally "

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Random Memories #51

Click this picture to see a larger, more legible image.

This is part of an ongoing series that I've been doing about my memories of working at the same place for 12 years. This is a continuing series talking about the time I spent working in a Japanese office. The other parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

After the three permanent workers who I talked about in the previous parts of

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Will Miss #35 - being a "millionaire" (reflection)

My husband's old pay stub. Ah, those were the days... days when we had jobs.


If you think that the way you perceive money and numbers does not matter, start paying very close attention to the way prices are set in your home country. My current rent is $1395. It isn't that way because someone figured that it would just be too high if it were $1400, but rather because that's as close as they

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Will Miss #35 - Japanese political advertisements (reflection)

MacArthur famously called Japan a nation of children. Over the years, this has been interpreted in various ways and one cannot know what he truly meant by this because MacArthur wasn't called on the carpet for this ethnocentric and possibly racist remark. He was around in the day when the press didn't dissect everything or grill the speaker for saying idiotic things.



I can see, to some

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Random Memories #50

This is part of an ongoing series that I've been doing about my memories of working at the same place for 12 years. This is a continuing series talking about the time I spent working in a Japanese office. The other parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Reading through the stories of two of my former colleagues during my early years at my office job in Japan, it may seem that everyone I

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Won't Miss #526 - mentaiko

Mentaiko sembei (rice crackers). I want to love you like so many others do. I really do. We are just incompatible.

I really am open-minded about food. I'll try nearly anything, and I'll even make a good faith effort to like things which I experience repeatedly. That being said, mentaiko, or spicy cod roe, and anything flavored with it was just not something I could come to like. The strange

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Will Miss #525 - Mt. Takao

I wish I had taken a walking stick or ski pole. Older ladies like these were out-climbing me left and right. 

Mt. Takao is the lesser-loved child of the Japanese mountain family. Every would-be tourist knows Mt. Fuji and many are drawn to it like a magnet. It's a point of pride for visitors and natives alike to say they've scaled "Fuji-san", but Mt. Takao is really where the climbing action

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Random Memories #49

This is part of an ongoing series that I've been doing about my memories of working at the same place for 12 years. This is a continuing series talking about the time I spent working in a Japanese office. The other parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

Last week, I wrote about one of the three foreign instructors with whom I worked at my former job at a Japanese company. I should note that,

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Won't Miss #34 - Japanese politicians (reflection)

I used to read the news for Japan several times a week when I lived there. Now, I'm lucky if I remember to have a peak at "Japan Today" a couple of times a month. That means that I'm not privy to what "those darn politicians" are saying these days unless whatever is offered is so egregious that it crosses the ocean and taps on the American media's shoulders. Usually, that means I get a head's

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Shameless Non-Self, well, Minimal Self-Promotion

Loco's book is currently available as an e-Book for the low price of $2.99. I heartily endorse it, as you'll see if you're patient enough to get through most of my inane prattle. 

Quite some time ago, I read a book called “The Origin of
Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” by Julian
Jaynes. No, don't go look it up. You're not going to want to read it.
It's heady stuff and

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Will Miss #33 - weird KitKat flavors (reflection)

Ramune and lemon vinegar flavors.

Around the time that I left Japan, Nestle Japan seemed to be changing their marketing strategy. The days when they regularly (and somewhat frequently) released bizarre one-off flavors seem to be over. There is still the occasional freaky flavor as well as the regional offerings, but the treadmill of weirdness has stopped.

That doesn't mean that I don't miss

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Random Memories #48

This is a continuing series talking about the time I spent working in a Japanese office. The other parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Before I get to what I expect to be the final part of this series of memories about working for a Japanese company for 12 years, I'd like to turn to talking about the parade of coworkers I had over the years (which may take a few parts because it was a lot).

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About comments lately

I'd like to apologize to my readers for not getting to comments on my blogs as of late. My husband and I were doing apartment hunting and then moving (our 6th move since returning to the U.S. in March 2012) and it has been extremely difficult. I read every comment and appreciate them (on both blogs!), but haven't had time to craft replies. Rest assured that they are at least read!

Also, there

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Won't Miss #525 - aural anarchy in shops

One thing which I hated in stores in Tokyo was the high level of noise. It wasn't just the normal playing of music in shops that you get in the U.S., but a near constant stream of announcements or advertising. When I walked through the local supermarket, Inageya, they'd constantly be playing their jingles over the loudspeaker and they stationed cassette players (yes, cassette players) around

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Will Miss #524 - Ebisu Garden Place

There is a certain ebb and flow to life in Tokyo that I have not found since returning home. It's possible that New York City carries the same vibe, but I somehow doubt it. The way it works is that there is the rush and crush of life centered around the stations. The closer you are to one, the more people there are and there is an enormous concentration of shops. As you move out, you discover

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Random Memories #47

This is a continuing series talking about the time I spent working in a Japanese office. The other parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

The image most foreign folks have of Japanese workers is one of people who are hard-working, respectful, and loyal. It wouldn't be too far fetched to say that many employees start out that way, but you can say that of a lot of new employees. No one is happier and

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Won't Miss #33 - PET bottles, everywhere (reflection)

When I was still living in Tokyo, I never researched the reason why people put PET bottles full of water all over their property. This eyesore was to stop cats from doing things, especially peeing on the property. I was told that they were placed there for that reason by many of my students and acquaintances and never looked any deeper.



However, it has been suggested to me that there are

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Will Miss #32 - such nice, clean people (reflection)

As I mentioned in the "won't miss" portion of this two-part post, Japanese people aren't necessarily as clean as their reputation would lead one to believe. People litter, and there aren't as strict laws in place to punish them for doing so in Japan like there are in the U.S. More than one student would complain to me that people would throw their trash bags out their car windows on the

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Random Memories #46

This is part of an ongoing series in which I talk about my experiences working for a Japanese company for 12 years. The other parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4

In the previous post, I talked about some of the reasons that I stayed at my former company despite being treated unfairly and being at the mercy of an idiosyncratic and sometimes mercurial president. The biggest reason, however, is that it

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Won't Miss #524 - lots of deadly halitosis

The Japanese labor under the idea that foreigners stink more than they do. Deodorant is sometimes advertised as helping people who have the body odor issues of a non-Japanese and many supremely stinky people live their daily lives offending others because they've bought into the idea that all Japanese people don't have the same glands as foreigners and therefore never need some antiperspirant

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Will Miss #523 - no "gluten-free"

The irony is that a lot of food in Japan is naturally gluten-free due to the "rice culture".

One of my former coworkers asked me what I was doing during the March 11, 2011 earthquake and I told him that I was baking muffins. He said, "I bet you were," in a way which patronizingly said, 'you prairie muffin housewife, you'. When men become chefs of all sorts, they are masters who are

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Random Memories #45

This is a continuation of a story I've been telling in multiple parts. The other parts are here: 1, 2, 3

In my last post, I talked about the president of my former company and how his idiosyncrasies made life difficult for the employees. In fact, if one reads through the rather long laundry list of the things he did which showed his lack of trust and disrespect for the foreign staff, it

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Won't Miss #31 - culture of victim-hood (reflection)

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you know that I'm a person who favors balanced perspective. I have mentioned "yin" and "yang" many times in posts and I find it far more difficult to believe in the starkness of "good" and "bad". I think that the world would be a far better place if we taught people perspective-taking in school. By that, I mean that we helped them place themselves

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Will Miss #30 - saying anything in public (reflection)

I assumed when I came home that doing things like swearing in public would be off the table for me. Certainly, talking out loud about anything that was going on around me would be off limits. Well, I was wrong. There were a few things that I didn't account for when making my assumptions about life back home.

The primary one was just how few people actually walk around outdoors in the U.S. It

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Random Memories #44

This is a continuation of a sequence of stories on working in a Japanese office, an experience that I had over 12 of my 23 years in Japan. Here are parts 1 and 2.

In the previous post, I introduced information about my former company, which I believe was like a lot of little companies in Japan in that it operated as the private fiefdom of the man who ran it. The company survived, in part, on

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Won't Miss #523 - plodding meticulousness

One day, while I was in the post office in Japan to mail a few letters. There were three postal workers and three customers. It took more than 7 minutes per customer because the postal workers moved at glacial speed and paused to check every little detail as they went. One of the customers was filling out a single simple customs form and another was simply buying some stamps. This sort of

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Will Miss #522 - metric measuring

A B5 notepad. I'm more familiar with A3, B4, A4, etc. than I am with things like "letter" size thanks to having done more work in publishing in Japan than in America.

When any discussion about the metric system vs. whatever the hell America uses* comes up, the smug Europeans go on about how superior the former is and talk about how we should change. Let me say right now that it's attitudes

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Random Memories #43

Note: This is a continuation of a post from last week. Part 1 is here. 

My former company was established in the same year as Apple computer, 1976. It started as a dinky operation in a rundown part of Nishi-Shinjuku and expanded along with Japan's economic bubble. Mr. and Mrs. O, as we often referred to the president and his wife, had an idea for marketing correspondence English lesson

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Won't Miss #30 - Japanese cheese (reflection)

The type of food you enjoy is entirely a subjective matter. Whether we want to believe it or not, most of us like what we are used to. Though the human brain is designed to desire certain types of things more than others, namely, sweet, fatty, and salty food, the degree to which we like these things is governed by experience rather than any sort of objective measure. Whether you like subtle

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Will Miss #29 - statues of the Colonel (reflection)

Continuity can be a potent cultural touchstone, and one of the ones that I loved most in Japan were the statues of Colonel Sanders that were place outside of Japanese branches of KFC. I can't say that a reproduction of him graced every outlet, but it was at most of them in Tokyo. The Colonel is even part of local folklore in that there is supposedly a curse associated with a statue of him in

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Random Memories #42

If the internet is any reflection of what people think about Japan, it would seem that, when most foreigners conceptualize Japanese men, they seem to embrace one of two stereotypes. The first is the wacky-weirdo-otaku (geek) who dresses funny, plays with toys, watches anime, or does some such man-boy activities. These are the guys whose pictures show up in various photo memes demonstrating

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Won't Miss #522 - my neighbors

The yellow and fake brick building had our former apartment. The cement wall defines the edge of our neighbors home. Their front door was about a meter (about three feet) from the edge of the wall closest to us.

It should be noted before I indulge in this particular whinging session that I lived in Tokyo for the duration of my 23 years. I'm sure that living in other places would have

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Will Miss #521 - the limited selection

A refreshingly puny selection of products for lightening your coffee. Also, "Creap" is an awesome name for a product.

Studies have shown that giving people more than three choices creates stress for them, yet every time I walk into a supermarket in America, there are umpteen variations to choose from for almost every popular product. When I first arrived here, it was like a wonderland, but

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Random Memories #41

I grew up in a family situation which was very far from ideal. It certainly was not the worst experience a person can have, but it truly depends on where you put the bar on how bad an upbringing has to be in order to be considered a problematic one. For instance, if you consider that you have to be sexually abused or physically assaulted for a situation to be "bad", then I can proclaim that I

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Won't Miss #29 - "Japan has 4 seasons" (reflection)

It's a winter wonderland, isn't it? This is part of what four distinct seasons looks like in Tokyo.

Since returning to the U.S., I have not experienced one person for whom their weather is a point of pride. Of course, living in the Bay Area, "their weather" is "sunny and hot" or "sunny and not so hot". The seasons here are pretty much "the grass is brown" (summer) or "the grass is green" (

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Will Miss #23 - copyright infringement (reflection)

These are almost certainly unauthorized bits of Hello Kitty merchandise. This character's copyright is probably one of the most infringed worldwide. Though these were in Harajuku, I doubt anyone from Sanrio was walking around with a lawyer.

I learned a thing or two about copyright back in my days as a KISS (the rock group) fan. In the early 90's, KISS had lost a lot of their popularity and

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Random Thoughts: The Shape of You

Recently, I've been taking a graduate school class about substance abuse. This is my second and last free class courtesy of my husband's institution of higher learning. They have a policy of allowing the significant others of their students to audit one class per year, and I have availed myself of it to the maximum extent.

The education that I receive from it has been beyond the course

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Won't Miss #521 - peanut cream

When I first arrived in Japan, it seemed that there was no familiar peanut butter on the shelves. It was only in later years that one or two of the bigger local markets started carrying incredibly over-priced and small jars of Skippy peanut butter. Not knowing what was going on, I bought a carton of the substance pictured above. It was stocked with the jelly and jam and had pictures of

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Will Miss #520 - hidden meanings

I was given my beautiful dragonfly pencil case by my students. My husband was given this one by one of his students. This one, unfortunately, was not lost. And, I'm pretty sure that it isn't particularly symbolic of anything other than a culture that enjoys itself some fish.

Just before I left Japan, my friends and students gave me a plethora of goodbye gifts. Two students of mine, sisters,

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Random Memories #40

Tokyo Disneyland is now 30 years old. This is a 5-year anniversary guidebook that I received. The math tells you that, indeed, I am quite old.


There are people out there who are absolutely bonkers for Disneyland. I'm not sure what the appeal is, but the place really does something for them. They'll post pictures of themselves next to staff members in costumes of Minnie, Mickey, or Goofy, or

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Won't Miss #28 - aggressive drivers (reflection)

Early on in our time back in the U.S., my husband and I had an experience which came to represent one of the many psychological differences between Americans and Japanese. There was a judgement call at a crosswalk in which a pedestrian who had not yet entered the crosswalk was walking fast down the street toward it as our car approached the intersection. There was no crossing light but there

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Will Miss #27 - 100-yen shops (reflection)

I've mentioned on my other blog that Daiso Japan branches are located in California. There was one near where I used to live, but I moved, and that shop closed down around the same time. For those who don't know, Daiso is a 100-yen shop in Japan. In the U.S., it's a $1.50 shop. 



The American equivalent of a 100-yen shop is a dollar store. However, there really aren't that many actual

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Random Thoughts - Emotional Irregulars

Early in my time back in the U.S., I had a discussion with a relative about mental illness in America as compared to that in Japan. This stemmed from a comment I'd made on Facebook about how I was seeing so many adults standing on streets and corners holding up signs asking for money in which I said that that was unlikely to happen in Japan. There are multiple reasons for this. One is that

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Won't Miss #520 - shaking hands with Japanese people

When I was working for a correspondence school, we spent most of our days either correcting the homework that was sent in or conducting five-minute telephone lessons. When we were in a non-busy period, we wrote and made textbooks and other learning materials. One of the things my boss and I made was a guide to how to shake hands. Part of my work was drawing transparencies that illustrated

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Will Miss #519 - cabbage

These are cabbage potato chips. Yes, indeed.





When I was a kid, my mother liked to make a disgusting, sloppy stew of corned beef and cabbage. It smelled horrible and was this wet concoction of awfulness that made me believe that, while many vegetables seemed to be the spawn of the devil, cabbage was old Beelzebub himself. I couldn't imagine ever coming to like the awfulness that was

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Random Memories #39

Not every memory that I have of Japan is a weighty one. In fact, I think that life is made up of a series of little memories that will flutter away like leaves on an autumn wind if we don't think to hold onto them and stash them away in a box of keepsakes. This is one of the reasons why we take a million boring pictures during our vacations. They are visual cues about what we saw and did,

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Won't Miss #26 - Idols (reflection)

I wonder when the first annoying teen musician first appeared on the scene. Was there some pretty boy cave man who wow'ed the post-pubescent girls with prominent brow ridges? Perhaps it all began with the advent of the first mass media. I think that the first one that I can think of was Enrico Caruso. Though I am old, I'd like to make it clear that I was not actually present during his years

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Will Miss #26 - humorous misspellings (reflection)

One of the experiences that happened casually that added color and humor to my days in Japan was finding places with misspelled words that carried unintended meaning. I have to say that life in America seems a lot "flatter" due to not running across such innocent signs and messages. In Japan, my husband and I would be walking along and he'd says, "look at that" and point out something funny

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Random Memories #38

This is the last in a series of memories related to my experiences with sumo in Japan. The first part is here and the second is here, though you really don't have to read all of them to follow this part.

Humans experience the world through their senses: sight, sounds, smell, touch, taste. Those of us who have grown up with television have been conditioned to focus on what we see and hear

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Won't Miss #519 - fundoshi

These type, super thin shorts have replaced fundoshi for many modern participants in festivals, and the audience members are grateful.

Fundoshi are the thongs that men sometimes wear in rituals or festivals in Japan. They amount to a thong made from twisted cloth. They tend to be worn by men who have been around the track a few times and are closer to retirement age than university

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Will Miss #518 - few or no tacky clothes

Maybe making them "cute" makes them seem less tacky? Or maybe I've lost my mind.

Perhaps this is my imagination, or I don't frequent nice enough stores in the U.S., but I see a lot of profoundly ugly clothes in America. In fact, in some stores, the styles and types of designs that I see are almost painful to look at. Even the strange T-shirts in Japan didn't look as stupid as the T-shirts

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Random Memories #37

The Kokugikan, or "national stadium", located in Ryogoku, Tokyo. 

This is a continuation of last week's post about random memories.

One of the things about being new to a place, any place, including a new city in your home country, is that you don't know the ropes. Before information became something anyone could access via a Google search, it could take years to learn what was possible, if

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Won't Miss #23 - bigoted taxis (reflection)

I'm going to say something which probably sounds a little crazy, but bear with me. When I fill out a survey here in the U.S., and I do so more often than you'd think, I feel like I've somehow failed as a person when I have to check the box which says "white/Caucasian". Since I have returned, I've had "white privilege" tossed in my face so many times that I feel like I've done the part of

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Will Miss #25 - Japanese postal service (reflection)

Notice that there's a postal worker (in the right, wearing a tie, and white shirt) helping people in the line as well as several at the counters. 

I made more than my share of trips to various post offices in my life, more so than many folks due to my carrying on a long distance relationship in pre-internet days from the U.S. and conducted a mail order service for collectible records from

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Random Memories #36

Image from "sumo forum". This was an issue we almost certainly once owned. It shows Kirishima fighting Konishiki.  


I have always felt that people approach cultural experiences backwards. They go to Japan, watch kabuki, attend a tea ceremony, climb Mt. Fuji, or attend a sumo match. These things are done without any real understanding of the events that one is witnessing or taking part in.

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Won't Miss #518 - puny meat portions

A Thai meal "set" in Tokyo. See that little blob of chicken in the middle of my curry? See that enormous mound of rice? Discuss.


My husband and I have been back since the end of March 2012 and, oddly, we bought our first chain-made pizza yesterday. It was from Pizza Hut, and, coincidentally, that was the chain we patronized most in Japan. That means I have copious amounts of experience with

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Will Miss #517 - (fearlessly) taking pictures of food

I didn't realize it until I returned, but people in the U.S. think it's really freakish to take pictures of your food when you're at a restaurant. In Japan, it's practically a sport. Many people use their cell phones or cameras to catalog what they're eating and then post the picture on social media sites. It's not only considered socially acceptable by your cohorts, but also by the restaurant

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Random Thoughts: Little Culture, Big Culture

One of the things about living in Northern California in the Bay Area is that it has a lot of people from various cultures. It is far more ethnically diverse than most parts of the U.S. and has ample numbers of people of Hispanic origin, African America, Middle Eastern, Indian and a wide representation of Asian cultures including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese. It's rare that a day

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Won't Miss #23 - people shouting outside of shops (reflection)

In Tokyo, it was rare that a day went by when I didn't pass by someone shouting outside of a storefront as a way of beckoning them into the store. In the U.S., I sometimes see people standing on street corners waving signs around, but they never shout out to people. I don't know if they can't do that by law, or if they realize it's pointless to shout at people passing by in cars. All I know is

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Will Miss #23 - relationship with my students (reflection)

My teaching profile sheet from my last job at an eikaiwa (conversation school). 

Hands down, this is the one thing that I can say without reservation has gotten harder to bear over time. My relationship with my students was not one of friendship or scholarship, but more of a therapeutic one in which I largely functioned as a counselor and they as clients. The biggest part of good therapy is

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Random Memories #35

All of the memories I have written about so far in this series relate to time spent in Japan, but the truth is that my relationship with it began shortly after it began with my boyfriend. A lot of the things that I use to talk about my memories pre-date my ever having set foot on Japanese soil. They are the souvenirs of things that he sent me as part of our correspondence and I learned a lot

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Won't Miss #517 - no root beer

Wine candy? Sure. No root beer barrels, though.

Life is full of tiny little pleasures. In fact, if you can focus on those, you will be a much happier person in general since the small ones come along so often and the big ones so infrequently. Growing up, my family used to go to an A&W drive-in restaurant (now long out of business) and root beer is an old-fashioned pleasure. It's so associated

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Will Miss #516 - less emphasis on money

One thing that I was aware of long before I left Japan was that the emphasis in America is largely on money. Your value as a person is determined by your ability to earn cash. Your value to the family is determined by what you bring to the bank account or what you take away. An acquaintance, whose family of origin is from a Middle Eastern culture, said that, there, family was most important,

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Random Thoughts: Moving

This was our living room within days of our departure from Japan. Four suitcases were all we took back with us. We didn't ship anything. It was just 4 suitcases. Here is what it looked like before we started tearing it apart.

My husband and I lived in Tokyo for 23 years and we did not move once. It wasn't because we had a great landlord, though we did. It wasn't because we liked our apartment

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Won't Miss #22 - pretty, but bland pastries (reflection)

As people get older, their taste buds are supposed to weaken such that they can't taste things as they could when they were younger. That's why they supposedly start to like strong-tasting food like Limburger cheese, brawnschweiger, raw onion, and mustard. I believe that, while it is true that people's taste buds change as they age, I also think that we build can obliterate the sensitivity of

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Will Miss #22 - station shopping malls (reflection)

Some time late last year, my husband and I ventured to an area we hadn't been to before and he suggested we walk to the local train station to see what was happening around there. The answer was "nothing". Later, we went to another one that he had been to before and recalled had sold some souvenirs and whatnot. As we approached the building, I actually felt a little excited. Once inside, I

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Random Memories #34

A diagram of our apartment as it was in 1996. I drew it in some little drawing program made by Apple.

In Baye McNeil's book, "Hi, My Name is Loco and I am a Racist", he talks about his roommates thinking that he's doing something incredibly weird in his room because they detect an unusual odor emanating from it. In the end, they figured out that the aroma was not generated by Baye or anything

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Won't Miss #516 - terrible organics

This guy was hanging in front of the organic food shop. See, he's not too happy with it either. ;-)


There was an organic food store near my local station when I lived in Asagaya in Tokyo. You can always tell a shop that sells food untouched by the brutal hand of pesticides by the fact that it has a bunch of brown, wilted, nasty-looking fruit and vegetables whereas all of the other shops have

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Misc. Blog Stuff and Feedly

I've already posted about this on my other blog, the one about junk food, and I wanted to say a word here. Most bloggers, including me, are getting regular readership from people who subscribe using an RSS reader. Many of my readers are using Google Readers, as I did for quite a few years. The awesomeness of such readers is that they allow you to track when new content is available without

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Will Miss #515 - reliability of utilities

I've lived in my apartment in California for only 6 months, and have already experienced one utility-based problem. The water was shut off for a period of two hours to do some sort of maintenance. I was given a 24-hour notice of this fact 19 hours before the shut-off occurred and it was actually off for closer to 2 1/2 hours. This isn't such a big deal except for the fact that when the water

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Random Memories #33

A business card from my husbands employer. The school has been defunct for a long time.

This is my last random memory related to working for Nova when I first moved to Japan. The other entries are here: first, second, third.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Nova had a bad reputation among teachers as a company that cheated employees. Given that fact, one may wonder why on earth I'd try to

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Won't Miss #21 - cockroaches (reflection)

As I mentioned in my original post, there are roaches everywhere in the world, but the ones I encountered in Japan were bigger and more plentiful. Nothing in my experience since returning has changed that perception. In fact, since coming home, and living in three different places and two different states, I haven't seen one roach. Of course, I haven't hung out in many seedy dives or back

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Will Miss #21 - not carrying a purse (reflection)

This was something which I didn't think much about it when I was in Japan, and it did make sense when I speculated on it, but I've found that it is absolutely true that I didn't need a purse then, but I do need one now. The old backpack served me very well when I was dealing with public transportation and schlepping around Tokyo, but I find that I need a different type of gear here.



First

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Random Memories #32

Note: This is somewhat of a continuation of my two previous posts (here and here), though it is not necessary to have read them to follow this.



It has often been said that people get the government they deserve. I believe this is true. I also believe that, in the 80's in Japan, language schools got the types of teachers they deserved based on how they hired them and how they were treated.

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Won't Miss #515 - the toilet seats

At the risk of inviting comments about fat American asses (any such comments won't survive the moderator, just a word of warning), I have to say that the toilet seats in Japan were generally thin plastic affairs which tended to crack over time. This happened not only to the seat we used in my apartment, but also to the ones that were used by the offices that I worked in. This happened because,

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Will Miss #514 - skinny Santas

Santa didn't used to be fat. This is something that I learned with a little research. It seems that the image of Santa which has become quite popular comes to us courtesy of Coca-Cola. They thought that a jolly, chubby Santa was more fun than a severe, skinny one. I don't know if the rotund Santa is popular worldwide, but I do know that that is the only way that I ever saw him growing up in

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Random Memories #31

This is the thing that got me my first job in Japan. 



Note: This is somewhat of a continuation from my previous post about getting jobs in Japan.


Some moments in life are burned into your memory with perfect clarity. This is not so strange. What is odd to me is that the ones you recall with photographic-memory-like clarity are not necessarily the ones that are the most meaningful. For

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Won't Miss #19 - lack of whole grain foods (reflection)

A selection of lovely bread products from the excellent bakery, Antendo. 


There were all sorts of foods that I was looking forward to trying in America, and none more so than the plethora of whole grain bread options. The idea of walking into a store and grabbing a bag of Orowheat bread instead of having to make my own sounded pretty awesome. And it was, but the truth is that I'm still

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Will Miss #19 - New Year's being a real holiday (reflection)

One of the things my students used to tell me was that they were interested in how I viewed parts of their lives as remarkable. We don't know what may look weird or unique to others until we experience another perspective. This was absolutely one of the best things about living in Japan. It made me feel more alive every day to be so aware of my surroundings.



Of course, as time goes by, you

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Random Memories #30

In an e-mail recently, someone asked me how I got my jobs in Japan. It wasn't until I'd written my reply that I realized that the manner in which I scored the few jobs that I had are actually pretty outdated by modern standards. Over the years, some things about job-hunting have changed, and others have stayed the same. Women are still preferred for jobs when teaching children is the work.

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Won't Miss #514 - kamaboko

Sometimes you'll go into a market or convenience store in Japan and see pretty pink and white or green spirals with scalloped edges that look like some sort of candy. In fact, they bring to mind slices of potato candy, a concoction of peanut butter, mashed potatoes and powdered sugar which sounds horrible, but is tasty in a way that is hard to describe, especially when you're a poor child and

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Will Miss #513 - culture of luck

When I was a kid, I remember finding an odd fuzzy, finger-shaped thing with a metal cap and a beaded key chain on one end at my grandparents' home. I asked what it was and my grandmother said that it was a rabbit's foot. I asked her why she would have such a thing and she said it was for luck. These days, I doubt that many people have the decapitated body parts of unfortunate lapine creatures

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Random Thoughts: Imperfect Among Equals

I audited (took, but didn't get credit for) a class on psychopharmacology at my husband's graduate school during the previous quarter. This is one of those things which I can do here that I couldn't imagine being able to do in Japan. I somehow doubt that spouses can take part in their partner's classes, let alone do so for free.

This experience was an interesting way of being immersed in a

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Won't Miss #18 - high price of fresh fruit (reflection)

One of the things I've had the luxury of doing since returning to the U.S. is consuming a steady diet of strawberries, grapes, pineapple, and clementines. I can buy them in copious amounts at Costco for reasonable or cheap prices (depending on the season). What is more, I actually own a refrigerator which is big enough to accommodate the large volume containers.



What is that you say about

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Will Miss #18 - strange station art (reflection)

I've been on public transport relatively little in America, and that's because there is relatively little of such transport. What little "art" I tend to see related to such areas tends to be graffiti which has been scrawled by bored miscreants. While I do believe that some graffiti art is quite impressive, the vast majority is balloon words with faux depth and hastily scrawled words.



In

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Random Memories #29

Studio Alta, around spring of 1989.


I once read a book written by a woman who believed she remembered past lives and could access future lives. The book was published quite some time ago, and one of the things she talked about enjoying in the future was interactive displays at stores. At the time the book was written, that seemed on the futuristic side. By the time I left Japan, such things

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Won't Miss #513 - crowded graphic design

After 3 years in Japan, 2 of which I spent teaching English at Nova conversation school and the 3rd of which I spent recovering from surgery, I started to work for a company that sold and produced correspondence lessons. During the busy times, about half the year, I corrected student homework essays and talked to them on the phone for 5-minute "lessons". During the other half of the year, I

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Will Miss #512 - easy and safe picture-taking

One of the things I loved to do in Japan and would love to continue to do in the U.S. is take random pictures that include people or are of people dressing strangely or doing odd things. In Japan, being a foreigner pretty much gave you a free pass when it came to pointing a camera at someone (or in their general direction). In the U.S., I'm afraid of being confronted angrily by people who

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Random Memory #28

My first experience with Japanese gift-giving was a very confusing one in 1988 when I visited my future husband. At that time, I didn't know about the way in which gifts are used to build, cement, or verify relationships. In fact, I can't say now that I understand all of the nuances involved in the custom, and I'm not sure I ever will.



When I went to Tokyo in 1988 to spend a month-long

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Won't Miss #17 - uncovered, open-mouth coughing (reflection)

If your germ-bra slips down, it's not going to protect anyone from disease.


One of my former high school classmates recently messaged me on Facebook to say that he was going to be meeting the head of a major Japanese company that had acquired his somewhat less major American company. He wanted any advice I could give him about dealing with this meeting. During our exchanges, he mentioned

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Will Miss #15 - weird stuff in people's windows (reflection)

I think they'd even let me display one of these in my apartment window in Japan. Here, it'd send the estate agent into a state of total apoplexy.


I can't speak for everywhere in Japan or America and what sort of situations renters experience. I can say that I knew far more people who rented their places than owned them in Tokyo and that I've talked to people who rent places in the U.S. I

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Random Thoughts: The New Japan Tourism Ad

Upon first glance at this picture, what is it that you told yourself the objects in the foreground were? Did you think "canes" and imagine they were for disabled people to assist in walking? Or, did you think "walking sticks" to help people climb mountains? If you pay attention (or can read the Japanese), you can see which one is correct, but it's easy not to know which is the case at first

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Won't Miss #512 - dutiful citizen myth

Is that a begging bowl or are you just happy to see me?


In the imaginations of most foreigners in Japan, Japanese people are paragons of civic virtue and foreigners are vile tax dodgers who whine and complain about paying their city taxes, health insurance, and contributing to the pension system. The truth is that most Japanese people do pay their legally-mandated expenses, but only because

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Will Miss #511 - mottainai (regarding food)

Image from the mottainai info site. 


One of my students told me that she went to a curry restaurant and was served an enormous portion. She told me that she tried very hard to eat it all, but eventually, she had to "give up". This type of story, including the conclusion that one should try to eat everything one is served, was very common among my acquaintances and friends in Japan. Some

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Random Memory #27

When my husband headed off to fulfill his one-year-teaching-contract, and we embarked on a long-distance relationship separated by thousands of miles, neither of us knew what he would be seeing aside from perhaps some cool music collectibles. He didn't know about all of the weirdness in terms of the language because the internet hadn't yet been invented by Al Gore. Sites like Engrish.com

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Won't Miss #15 - oppressive humidity (reflection)

Since coming home, the notion of running back to Tokyo has popped into my head more than a few times. In fact, I'd be surprised if it hasn't entered my mind about a hundred times by now. I'll admit it, I seriously miss the lifestyle. The idea of strolling around Asagaya late at night without a care in the world or hopping a train and going to some obscure train station just to explore remain

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Will Miss #14 - (literal) global perspective shift (reflection)

I read recently on a content aggregation site that the globe icon graphics on Facebook are different if you live in another part of the world. That is, the globe is turned around such that the map does not show the Americas, but focuses on Asia. Frankly, I think this is something that should be done even in the West. Rather than constantly show us the earth with America centered on the map,

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Random Memories #26

Sometimes I wonder what sort of cultural touchstones people shared before mass media allowed us to share common fads and trends. Did nostalgia before television, mass publishing, and radio come merely as a family thing or was there something other common experience which drew large and disparate numbers of people under the same emotional umbrella? I think we often take it for granted that

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Won't Miss #511 - denial of cross-cultural relationship issues

All relationships have problems, and each type has specific problems based on the people involved and the circumstances. Cross-cultural relationships have specific ones based on a variety of issues including language differences and differences in expectations. Seriously, they do. There are even a few books written about them to help people anticipate and cope with them. I'm not making this

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Will Miss #510 - torii

There was nothing in Japan that said, "hey, I'm in Japan," as much as the torii or gates that herald the entrances to sacred spaces (usually Shinto shrines). Despite having lived there for 23 years and having seen a lot of these gates everywhere, they never failed to catch my eye. In fact, one of the things which often caught my interest was how often you'd see a torii in the middle of a

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Random Thoughts: Default assumptions

One of my former students works in the fashion industry. She had been working for an Italy-based maker of sophisticated and simple clothing and during much of the time I taught her, she made multiple trips to that country. For several years, my job mainly was to help her improve her English for those trips.



After quite a few years at the same company, and no small amount of difficulty with

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Won't Miss #14 - maid fetishists (reflection)

I'm fully cognizant of the fact that my geographic circumstances strongly affect my experiences here in the U.S. as they did in Japan. Nonetheless, my subjective reality is as valid as any other. They may not be generalizable, but they are fair. When I discuss life in Japan for me as opposed to life in America for me, I speak anecdotally, but that doesn't mean it's not a reflection of a truth

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Will Miss #13 - Akihabara's mega stores (reflection)

Akihabara used to be a mecca for me back in the days when I was an Apple computer fan. I used to go there and drool over the latest hardware and even buy the occasional Japanese Mac Fan magazine and do my best to read through it as well as install some of the shareware and demos on the discs (which were often in English because they hadn't been translated into Japanese). By the time I left

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Random Thoughts - The Lost Horizon

You can just feel the peace and harmony.


There is a 1937 movie made by Frank Capra called "Lost Horizon" which has been on my mind lately. For those who are too young or non-trivia-minded to realize this, he's the man responsible for "It's a Wonderful Life." That fact may make you want to lay Christmas flowers on his grave or go and stomp on it while cursing wildly. It all depends on how you

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Won't Miss #510 - weak glasses prescriptions

Yes, this is an eyeglasses shop, and, in fact, was where I got my last pair of glasses before leaving Tokyo. It doesn't usually look like this. This was during a festival.



I didn't buy glasses terribly often in Japan, but when I did, I found that every time my visual clarity was not great. It seemed that the optometrists always gave me a prescription that was as weak as possible while still

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Will Miss #509 - neighborly behavior

Some qualities of an experience are so subtle and hard to describe that language, no matter how precise, will mislead the reader. I've found this to be the case many times while writing this blog, especially when it comes to titles. Brevity is a virtue, and I think many writers would do well to say less than they do, but it also increases the chance that one will be misunderstood. This topic

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Random Memories #25

Bukkurando (Book Land). Those who have lived in Japan may recognize the tiny logo in the upper left as the Tsutaya logo. I have no idea why a video shop was named this way, and I don't know when Tsutaya changed it's name/focus. And though it was called "Book Land", we were only renting videos there and I don't recall any books being there at all. 


When my grandparents or parents used to talk

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Won't Miss #13 - cell phone zombies (reflection)

Cherry blossom viewing is soooo boring that one needs to spice things up a bit with the excitement of texting.


When I originally posted this, in the early days of this blog, people told me that this problem existed everywhere in the world, not just Japan. People who mindlessly walked or stood around staring at their cell phones while tuning out the rest of the world weren't only a scourge in

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Will Miss #12 - the kitler at the local liquor store (reflection)

One of the things I infrequently mentioned about returning to life in the U.S. was that I would be looking forward to being in a situation in which we could, in good conscience, have a cat. Though we stayed in Japan for 23 years, we were never sure when we'd leave. Though, had we gotten a cat the minute we arrived, it would have died long before we left, we never planned to stay that long.

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Randoms Thoughts: The Pitfalls of Interpretation

These were hanging from the roof of a Toyota exhibition in Odaiba. You may interpret their presence as you see fit. My guess was giant tribbles were taking over Japan, but they could just as easily be prototypes for a new Donald Trump hairpiece or steel wool pads for cleaning the pots of giants. 


Recently, I read an article about family therapy in Japan. It was published in an academic

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Won't Miss #509 - foreigners who don't want foreign friends

There's a knee jerk reaction that some (usually long-term) foreigners have toward other foreigners. They say that they don't want foreign friends and don't associate with other foreigners. Some of them have what sound like reasonable excuses, like they don't want to spend all of their time speaking English. Trust me when I say that no one spends so much time with a friend that opportunities to

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Will Miss #508 - volunteers when you look lost

In yesterday's post, I mentioned that I got lost during my first trip to Japan and, what I didn't realize at the time was that there was every chance some kind Japanese person would help me. There were many occasions when my husband would pause to look at a map to figure out where we should turn in a new area that we were exploring. We were not lost at those times. He just wanted to get his

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Random Memories #24

Right-click (PC) or control-click (Mac) and load this in a new window to see the full-size map.


One thing that you find many foreign folks (and some Japanese) find confusing is navigating the streets in Tokyo. I've heard that the addressing system was designed according to when the buildings were built rather than based on any sort of sequential numbering. I'm not sure that that is true. It

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Won't Miss #11 - city living, the reality (reflection)

I grew up in a tiny rural town. The benefits of this were that it was not noisy, driving was a breeze as there was nothing resembling traffic, and there was little risk of any sort of crime even if you were out in the middle of the night. That being said, it wasn't all trees, deer, and bucolic splendor. There were few to no job opportunities and nothing to see or do. Alcoholism was rampant

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Will Miss #9 - escalator etiquette (reflection)

In a crowded city in which many tall buildings are the norm, behavior on escalators is a huge issue. If people block you when you want to walk upstairs, or worse, do the old dead stop at the top or bottom, it can be beyond frustrating. When I was in Tokyo, the way in which people lined up on the left and left the right side of an escalator clear was something I really appreciated.


What I

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Random Memories #23

All images from MOS Burger's web site.


Those who have lived in Japan likely already know MOS Burger very well. Those who do not may see it as just another fast food franchise, except this one was born in and mainly operates, in Japan. While MOS Burger looks and feels like any other fast food place, the experience there is actually quite different. 


When my husband and I first moved to

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Won't Miss #508 - culturally adjusted = no complaints

Click to see a larger version that is more legible.

People think that adjusting to life in Japan is about no longer getting irritated at various cultural differences. Foreigners who are relatively new to Japan in particular have this perspective. The basic idea appears to be that you are adjusted when you no longer get annoyed by anything which is a unique experience in Japan. However, there

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Will Miss #507 - people try (hard) to understand

I had a conversation recently with a friend about communication among native speakers of the same language. In particular, she and her family were having some issues trying to understand why a new person of their acquaintance seemed not to be true to her word. It is possible that this person is not actually meaning what she says, but it's also possible that she doesn't mean what they think

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Random Memories #22

Back in the day, used record shops used to dot the earth. Well, they used to be scattered all over Tokyo. Record collectors could roam far and wide looking for that rare bit of vinyl or a bargain on more commonly available releases. They could do that, or they could simply buy the annual record map book that told you where to find all of the best places.




Image from Amazon Japan's page. 

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Won't Miss #10 - contempt for English teachers (reflection)

If I don't teach people in Japan English, how will they know signs like this are actually funny?


Every time a foreign person asked me about my job in Japan*, I always emphasized the aspects that did not pertain to teaching English. This was actually easy for me to do since two big components of my work for the better part of my time there were writing textbooks and doing all of the desktop

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Will Miss #8 - convenient public transportation (reflection)

The biggest shock to my system upon returning to America has been the frustration of driving. I never especially enjoyed it, at least not in California, and now I find it really troubling. It could be that 23 years off the road have made me skittish, or that people really have gotten stupider and more reckless on the road. I suspect it is the latter because of higher levels of distraction due

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Random Memories #21

Click to load a larger, more readable image.

Memory is a funny thing, stranger than most of us realize. Unless you've been writing things down or recording them, there's a good chance that what you think was so was not really the case. This is not a new thought, but I do believe most people re-write history more often than they realize. Often, they do so to their advantage, but it's not

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Won't Miss #507 - setsuden

Yes, it's a special setsuden cloth. Note the fish whose tail isn't plugged in and his light is off. He's doing his duty!

When I left Tokyo in March of last year, I believed that setsuden, or (strong) energy conservation efforts would end by the summer of 2012. This movement, which came on the heels of the controversy over the use of nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster,

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Will Miss #506 - bento

What is it that young children love more than their Christmas gifts? They love the boxes that they came in. In fact, even as adults, people often enjoy the boxes that they receive things in to a curious amount. Why otherwise would web sites set up lavish photo spreads devoted to "unboxing" new adult toys (I mean things like iPads and laptops, not the other sort you dirty-minded people)?

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Random Thoughts: Different "agencies"

I'm going to pause in my weekly trip down memory lane to talk about something rather serious. It's the type of thing I try very hard not to remark on in public because I think that too many people jump on a current events bandwagon and start tossing out opinions as if they were proclamations from God. Any dissenting voices are then struck down with verbal fury as the demigod of each

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Won't Miss #8 - vending machine blight (reflection)

As I remarked in the original post, vending machines are everywhere in Tokyo. I had also been told that, even in the countryside, banks of machines sometimes stood in the middle of nowhere. More than one Japanese person told me that they saw them as an incredible waste of energy. I wonder if, in the face of strict energy conservation after the Fukushima meltdown in the wake of the March 11,

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Happy New Year 2013

If only snakes were really made of gold!

Happy New Year to all of my readers! Thank you for continuing to follow my blog(s), and for taking part in comments now that they have been enabled. It is a common custom at the start of the new year to reflect back upon the old one, and I must say that the past year has been a very rough one for me indeed.

Before I left Japan, I spent a great deal of

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