hmmn

Not literally, at any rate (for some reason, mosquitoes don’t take to me like they do to Naoko). No, feeling itchy that more than a week has gone by since my last post. Unfortunately I don’t have too much to report at the moment, I’m busy trying to find a Japanese language school, and trying [...]

Most first time visitors to Japan remark on the amount of vending machines in the country. I surely did. Like pubs in England, there appears to be at least one, and sometimes more, on every single corner. Across the street from where I live, there were actually two, until a few months ago when one [...]

Last week Japan’s National Police Agency released a report that showed that last year, 31,042 Japanese committed suicide. This figure marked the fourth straight year that suicides in Japan had surpassed 30,000. To put these numbers into perspective, consider that during 1999 in the United States, 29,199 people committed suicide, according to the U.S. Centers [...]

As I write, the greater Tokyo area is being treated to probably the most spectacular thunder and lightning show I’ve ever seen. Well, I said “treated” but I suspect I’m one of the few who’s actually enjoying it. Certainly our dog and cat are not. Too bad however that there’s still horendous humidity outside which [...]

I apologize for the paucity of posts lately, I’ve been trying to kick up my Japanese language studies up a notch and this and work and some good ol’ offline reading has put the blog on the temporary back-burner. In the meantime, you could do a lot worse for yourself than to check out the [...]

There’s apparently a typhoon on the way to the Kanto region of Japan. Today the “calm” before the storm brought intermittent but very heavy rains, and the loudest thunder I daresay I’ve ever heard in my life. Just now (almost 2am Wednesday morning) there was another spectacularly loud thunderclap. I’ve never been in a typhoon [...]