It’s tsuyu, rainy season, a designation determined by a group of experts without regard to actual rainfall. It rained once on the day after they had declared the end of rainy season, and that rain was designated non-rainy season rain. It was just rain. Continue reading
Imagine small, square dishes spread out on the black lacquer table, their white porcelain framing the slimy greens and reds of the usual Japanese delicacies. You’ve folded your legs, seiza-style, on cushions of gold-and-blue flowers. Your co-workers grab chopsticks and, with an “itadakimasu,” begin to eat. You join them. And then, almost as ritualistically as the tapping of beer glasses, someone turns to you and asks:
“You can use chopsticks?” Continue reading
I once saw a man staring at a handheld television set on a train, eyes swelling with tears, looking at what might have been video footage of a woman gazing back at him, her eyes wet with empathy and openness.
I wondered if Japan had a special market for DVDs of women sadly staring through the TV frame into the eyes of lonely salary men, distracting them from the complex horror of solitude.
It was just some sort of weird toothpaste commercial, the man, perhaps, had allergies. Continue reading
I recently helped some Taiwanese students come to town.
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I had a nice interview with Mads Berthelsen of The Japan Times, which ran today. He asked me about expat anxiety and we discussed whether or not This Japanese Life is a self-help guide to Japan. God help you if it’s yours.
You can read the interview over here.
On a recent trip to the near-abandoned coal mining town of Tagawa, I took the wrong train three times, taking me into the true inaka – Japan’s rural backwater.
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