Will Miss #533 - the liberal zoning laws

A restaurant (with vending machine in front), temple, hotel and apartment complexes all in close proximity. I don't know if this is usual for cities in the U.S., but it's the common crazy quilt in Tokyo.

I grew up in a rural area, so things like zoning laws never really meant much to me. There was so much land between homes and businesses that it never occurred to me in my youth that people

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Random Memories #62 - things I wish I'd kept or photographed - part 1

Some memories exist fully formed in my mind as "stories" of life in Japan. Others are little fragments which are jogged back into recollection by some random circumstantial experience. Those fragments tend to come and go randomly and I often feel that if I don't grab them and trap them in words, they may flit away forever as the chances that some stimulus will compel one to come forward again

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Won't Miss #46 - washing in cold water (reflection)

My old laundry machine in Japan - and it was actually a fairly modern one!

The first time in 23+ years that I was faced with an American washing machine, I was stunned by the buttons that allowed you to make choices about water temperature. I'm sure that our washing machine when I was growing up had such choices, but I frankly did not pay any attention to them at all. In my youth, laundry

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Will Miss #45 - New Year's Trinkets (reflection)

Shortly before the new year, my husband and I met a Japanese acquaintance at a Starbucks. We talked about a variety of things, including what it was like to go to shrines during the biggest holiday of the year in Japan. She thought it might be fun to go to a shrine in America on New Year's day. However, despite the fact that there is a large community of Japanese people in the area, there

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Random Memories #61 - First Impressions

All those people behind us? I didn't see any of them.


One of the questions that my students loved to ask was what my first impression was of Japan. Any time that this question was asked, I wondered what answer they would have expected. It made me think about what I initially expected when I arrived in Japan. The fact of the matter was that the circumstances under which I entered were so

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Won't Miss #533 - fear about retirement

One of the things that we all have to face as we get older is how we're going to look after ourselves in our old age. No matter what country you are in, this is something of concern. My husband and I saved a fairly decent nest egg (which we are now using to pay for his graduate school and life expenses) while in Japan, and no doubt that nest egg would have continued to grow had we stayed in

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Will Miss #532 - lack of New Year's resolutions

No resolutions, but plenty of bananas for New Year's day consumption. No, I don't know why, but there are always chocolate-covered bananas around the shrines. 

Most years, after returning from the holidays, I asked my students whether or not they made any New Year's resolutions. Each time I asked this question, I got a quizzical look. They didn't understand the word "resolution" and that was

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Random Thoughts: You are where you live

A very long time ago, when my husband was my boyfriend and we were in love but had never met face to face, we had an argument about children not yet born. Though it turned out that these hypothetical children were never to be and all our disagreements were moot, the exchanges we had on this topic are forever preserved in our audio correspondence from 1987.

One of the many topics that we

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Won't Miss #45 - pitifiul economies of scale (reflection)

Now that I'm back in the U.S. with access to all of the types of sales that are common here, I conceptualize what it means to be able to buy a lot of something in order to get it cheaper. One of the common sales here is at Safeway supermarket at which I can buy cases of soda for about half the usual price during sales. They tend to do a "buy 2, get 2 (or 3)" free deal. Sure, we have stacks of

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Will Miss #44 - Akiyoshi yakitori-ya (reflection)

Sticks served on a stainless steel rim around the food preparation area at Akiyoshi.

One of the things that I mentioned to my husband about living in California was that it was not a happy place for me because I had no good memories associated with being here. In fact, I only had bad memories connected to it as the 10 months that I lived here from the summer of 1988 to the late spring of

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Random Memories #60

This is the conclusion of my series of memories based on working at a Japanese company for 12 years. It may not be the last memory of my experiences, but it will complete this series. The other parts are here:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18.

After my company was purchased by a Nova subsidiary, my work experience took on a new cast. Yes, there was a lot of

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Won't Miss #532 - stain-orific mugs

I knew that there would be some things that I'd realize about life in Japan only after coming back to the U.S., but this is one that I never expected and couldn't have guessed. Awhile back, I posted about the habit in Japan of bleaching the crap out of everything, especially drinking cups. At that time, I thought they did this because of  an obsession with things looking clean that those of

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Will Miss #531 - card delivery on holidays

This year, I had some expectations that I'd receive some real Christmas cards. No, I did not expect to receive them from Americans. I expected to get them from Japanese friends and I did receive a few (and they were gorgeous). When Christmas day arrived and I'd only gotten four cards, I had a strange sense of anticipation about possibly getting just one more on the holiday itself. Of course,

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Random Memories #59

This is the enormous butt of a duck in stuffed toy form. Given what I mention in this post, the reason for showing something's tail end will become clear. FYI, this is in Sugamo, Tokyo. And, no, I don't get it either. 

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, 

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Happy New Year to my kind readers

This year will be the year of the horse. The fact that I pay attention to that is one of the lasting effects - one among many - of my time in Japan. It may seem a mere bit of trivia or an aspect of culture meant to add color and interesting fiction to the changing of the year. To me, it is more than that. It is a reflection of the  the way in which the shape of time passing is framed

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