A New Home Away from Home — or Something More?

A New Home Away from Home — or Something More? Yamanashi Prefecture Every so often, my wife decides it’s time for a family vacation. This time the destination was Yamanashi, near Kōfu City. We had visited a few months earlier, and that first trip gave me something I hadn’t felt in a long time — […]

Why Mr. Baseball Still Teaches You More About Japan Than Most Textbooks

Why Mr. Baseball Still Teaches You More About Japan Than Most Textbooks Before I came to Japan decades ago, I felt an almost urgent need to learn as much as I could. And back then, the most feasible way to do that wasn’t textbooks or blogs — it was whatever videos I could get my […]

A Trip Down Memory River? How Canada Imprinted Its Youth

A Trip Down Memory River? How Canada Imprinted Its Youth Memoirs: When Life was Simpler There are only a handful of childhood memories I still carry from the 1970s. Most have softened into flashes—images, sensations, the emotional temperature of a moment. But recently, thanks to a childhood friend and the bottomless archive we now call […]