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Cops

A police car drives past Koenji station and the flash highlights a curiously neon sign on its side.(I'd been meaning for quite some time to write something about the police in Japan but never quite got...

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Showing Off

Some of you may have noticed that I rarely type Japanese characters in my blog posts. Some of you may assume that I can't enter Japanese text and that's why I don't include it. That assumption would be...

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Valentine's Baking

Flourless dark chocolate mini cake.Today was Valentine's Day in Japan since we get there first. (We're a day ahead of the U.S.) Last year, I talked about how Valentine's Day is different in Japan and...

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In the Dark

Back in my former company's former office, we had a tiny little kitchen that barely two people could squeeze into for food-related tasks. It was often the case that foreign staff, who had a set...

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Reflections

A home-style design on the 1959 book.Teaching students privately is a dual-edged sword. On the one hand, you tend to get a better quality of student who is diligent, more personable, and more...

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Such Nice, Polite People

This afternoon, I was biking to a local grocery store and riding quite slowly down the street. There was an old (Japanese) man, probably in his 60's, walking down the side along the left. To give him a...

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A Peck of Pickled Plums

When I was a child, I was sleeping over at my grandmother's house and had been relegated to the sofa for lack of any other space to sleep in. My grandfather, who was bedridden, was set up in an...

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Charisma Men

Image pinched from the Charisma Man home page where one can order a comic book of the strips. Click this version to see a more readable size, or, visit the web site.Back when I first started working in...

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Student Roster - February 2008

About a year or so ago, I wrote out my student roster for the sake of my own future recollection, knowing it was of little interest to anyone but me. However, this is my blog and I'll bore if I want...

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Chocolate Sushi

Despite the fact that Valentine's Day was quite awhile back, my husband received the fun assortment of chocolates above from a student yesterday. He also got a box of truffles from the same student,...

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Lights Out

My apartment is pretty small, dark and airless so I have to leave the lights on in nearly every room to keep them lit sufficiently to work in them. It's not that there are no windows, but rather that...

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Anecdotal Lives

Sometimes I get very interesting questions from my commenters (and luckily I almost always get excellent comments as well). The questions which get me thinking rather deeply about something sometimes...

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Cross-Cultural Attention Needs

My previous post was a caveat for the answer I'm about to give to this question that I was asked in the comments section of a former post:"NINPO said...Hello Shari,I enjoyed reading your blog. I am a...

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So, I'm the Noisy Neighbor?

On a daily basis, I hear my upstairs neighbors going about the business of their daily life. I hear them dropping things, slamming doors, and seemingly tapping on the floor for no particular reason. On...

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The Dating Game

You can get your own octopus dumpling cell phone strap from Strap-ya (image pinched from their web site here).Despite the fact that only 2 of my current crop of 11 students are married, very few of...

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Time to File 2008

It's time for U.S. residents residing in Japan to file their income tax forms. If you've filed before, you should have already been mailed a packet with forms. If you haven't gotten those forms, you...

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Make the World a Better Place (and you a better person)

Before any of my readers are mislead into thinking this is going to be a list of well-worn "dos" and "don'ts", let me say that that's not the way my mind works. I don't think people need hear more...

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(Quite) A Few Words for the Haymakers

For several years, I was part of an on-line (Usenet) community for a particular on-line multiplayer game. I started off as an outsider in an established community of players and gradually became better...

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Vegetarianism and Eggplants

That looks like a lot more cheese than it really was.When you live in a rural area, seasonal food means food that is in season in your area or in areas not too far from you. Living in a metropolitan...

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Better Late Than Never (RSS)

The Google Reader RSS interfaceAs late as 1974, my paternal grandfather still had a black and white television. He told me that he thought color was bad for your eyes and he didn’t think anyone needed...

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The Temporary Shuffle

When I first started working full-time at my former company (a Japanese office job that involved textbook making as well as teaching via correspondence), I was informed through indirect channels that...

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The Dead Helping the Living

My friend Joseph over at "Tame Goes Wild" has been studying Japanese at university for the past several years. It's a staggering amount of work becoming fluent in Japanese and I really respect how hard...

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Rumble

Recently, I've been doing a lot of essay correction work for one of my students. This is relatively unusual as most lessons are spent actually speaking with one another rather than my staring down at a...

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Timing

Lately, I've noticed that my strongest impulse to make blog posts seems to come within 15 or fewer minutes of a lesson starting with one of my students. In fact, as I write this, I have a lesson 10...

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Goodbye

Due to various complications in my life, I have decided that it would probably be best for me to stop blogging.I want to thank all of the really kind and wonderful people who have taken the time to...

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