Random Thoughts: Space for Honesty

I'm taking a break from my recollections about the end of my time in Japan. Frankly, it's still an emotionally difficult thing to write about and this post has been percolating for awhile so I'll offer it here as a brief interlude. Thanks to those who take the time to read all of my prattle. :-)

As attentive readers may recall, my husband and I came back to the U.S. so he could go to

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Won't Miss #540 - Japanese marshmallows

I haven't celebrated Easter for quite some time because I have learned that there are greater costs to eating sweets than the impact on your wallet. Every time I have seen Easter candy here in America, I have thought about how the idea sounds better than the treats will taste. That being said, I have always loved all things marshmallow and occasionally will indulge in them here. I've even

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Will Miss #539 - the sound of Japanese sirens

This is, obviously, not my video, but this type of siren is very close to the ones I heard. The pitch is different, but it is otherwise the same.

I seem to have had the misfortune of living not too far from a street that is close to a fire station both in Tokyo and in California. That means that I hear more than my fair share of sirens going off. One of the things that I have come to really

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Random Memories #72 - the last weeks in Japan - part 4

H.'s goodbye gift to the husband and me - she chose this because she wanted to give us something to remind us of her house, which is two stories tall, but is not red and brown nor did it have a cat or bird.

When it came to saying goodbyes, my husband and I had to find a balance between his students/friends and mine. We couldn't possibly fit in goodbye get-togethers with everyone, much as we

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Won't Miss #50 - anime-style advertising (reflection)

I have to admit that I have an enormous personal bias when it comes to the sort of animation that is all over the otaku (geek/nerd) parts of Japan like Akihabara. The infantilized and sexualized imagery really irritates me. It's not only freaky, but creepy. If real people looked like the women in that artwork, they'd look like hideous alien creatures. It's so distorted that I view it not as

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

My husband and I were talking about some theoretical concepts regarding life and how people choose to live. It's all pretty complex stuff, but it comes down to the choices we make and how we "buy" ease in the present at the expense of some benefit in the future. For example, you might decide to buy a frozen pizza instead of making your own dinner. You spend more, get a less nutritious meal,

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Random Memories #71 - the last weeks in Japan - part 3

The beautiful laser-cut card that the two sisters gave me.


Here is part 1 and part 2 of this series.


When you have met as many people as my husband and I met during our time in Japan, there are a lot of goodbyes to offer. Our last few weeks were full of trying to balance preparation to leave with meeting people and saying goodbye to them. Some of them would see the last of us in

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Won't Miss #539 - being one down

I can't pretend that I know what it is like to be a minority in the U.S. I can say that I know very well what it is like to be a part of a tiny minority in a culture with an overwhelmingly dominant culture. White people are something like .2% of the population in Japan. To that end, we do suffer at least some of the standard problems that minorities have to deal with in other countries. One

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Will Miss #538 - whirling dervish women

During my recovery from depression after quitting my long-term office job in Japan, I was looking around trying to figure things out. I wanted to feel "normal" again. In fact, I wanted to actually be "healthy" and I started to attend to the way I saw Japanese people live their lives. I figured that they seemed to be doing okay. They knew what they were doing to live life as best they could

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Random Memories #70 - the last weeks in Japan - part 2

Seiyu supermarket with shelves picked clean in the wake of the March 11, 2011 quake.


This is part 2 of short series on my final weeks in Japan. Part 1 is here.


As I mentioned in my previous post, as my husband and I headed for the wire on our planned departure - a date which was chosen three years ahead of time - there were some late complications in the form of the discovery of a tumor

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

It's interesting how, the presence of something annoying can be grating, but it's absence not appreciated. This isn't a thought which came to me over the memories of Disney bags and small dangling Mickey figures on cell phones. It came to me a long time ago when I was suffering from chronic and oppressive pain. When you don't have pain, you don't think about its absence or appreciate being

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Will Miss #41 - no tipping (reflection)

I read several blogs devoted to food and cooking and little is more contentious than the custom of tipping in the U.S. One side claims it is a system designed to allow restaurants to justify grossly underpaying their employees. The other side says it allows the customer to be empowered in a fashion the promotes good service. My reply is, "can't it be both?" I am also only too aware that there

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Random Memories #69 - the last weeks in Japan - part 1

OK, I lied. It was four suitcases and two backpacks (and my husband's jacket).

Time is a far more complex and odd business than we generally give it credit for. It can appear to move fast or slow. We have sayings which indicate that time moves rapidly when we're enjoying ourselves ("time flies when you're having fun") or glacially when we're waiting for something to happen ("a watched pot

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Won't Miss #538 - the bacon

Having done over 1000 posts (Blogger tells me 1285 at this point), it is difficult at times to remember what I have and have not said so I try to double-check my past posts to see if I've already mentioned a particular topic. When it comes to this particular topic, I cannot believe I had not wrote about it before.

For the duration of our stay in Japan, my husband was disappointed in the

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