Tag: family

When you pass a Subway sandwich shop, do you enthusiastically head inside, happy to be able to eat such a ...

Onomatopoeia are the "sound words" that are all around us, and it's funny how they work differently in other languages. ...

Whenever I come to the U.S., my mind becomes a flurry of activity as I notice things that are different ...

This morning I was late for work, so I grabbed a piece of toast and prepared to run out the ...

In Japan, there are two kinds of cars, normal-sized ones and the super-small kei cars, defined as vehicles with engines ...

My son is in the second year of junior high, so it's time for us to start thinking about what ...

The other day my wife asked an unexpected question: "What part of San Diego is your family grave located in?" ...

Summer is here, which means attending festivals, shooting off fireworks with the kids, drinking mugi-cha (barley tea) and engaging in ...

Since the two great obsessions of my life have been Japan and Star Wars, I enjoy it when they come ...

A friend from Italy came to our prefecture for a visit, so I took him to one of my favorite ...

There are many things that American houses have which their Japanese counterparts lack, and vice-versa. A Japanese home will generally ...

It's nearly time for Japan's Golden Week, a semi-accidental clustering of holidays that usually fall near each other, which the ...

My wife bought me a great present the other day: a book featuring all the places to buy yaki-manju in ...

May 5 is Children's Day, a special time for celebrating boy children that's part of the Golden Week holidays. On ...

The other day my wife gave me a treat for dessert: a delicious slice of honeydew melon. It wasn't just ...

Yesterday was my daughter's graduation ceremony from elementary school, and my wife and I watched proudly as our little girl ...

Japan seems to have an especially tragic relationship with fire. The combination of older homes built close together, the common ...

Ask any gaijin living in Japan about dentists here and you'll probably hear a lot of complaints. I recently changed ...

It can be easy to get the wrong idea about other countries, and it's not uncommon for people to carry ...

Onsen (pronounced OWN-sen) are the volcanically heated baths that are so popular in Japan, and some hot springs like Arima ...

Spring is here, and that means something special to the Japanese: sakura, the cherry blossoms that make the country blaze ...

All in all, Japan is a fairly easy country for an expat to live in: people are friendly and interested ...

The other day I was listening to the audio book of Children of Men and I heard a word I'd ...

As a person from a relatively young nation, at least compared to Japan's long history, I'm often floored by how ...