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...
View ArticleShowing 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...
View ArticleValentine'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...
View ArticleIn 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...
View ArticleReflections
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...
View ArticleSuch 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...
View ArticleA 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...
View ArticleCharisma 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...
View ArticleStudent 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...
View ArticleChocolate 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,...
View ArticleLights 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...
View ArticleAnecdotal 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...
View ArticleCross-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...
View ArticleSo, 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...
View ArticleThe 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...
View ArticleTime 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...
View ArticleMake 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...
View Article(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...
View ArticleVegetarianism 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...
View ArticleBetter 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...
View ArticleThe 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...
View ArticleThe 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...
View ArticleRumble
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...
View ArticleTiming
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...
View ArticleGoodbye
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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