It’s nice to be getting settled in Japan and our apartment is nicely furnished with the exception of art.  There are some stray hooks on the walls from the previous tenants that I have been itching to put to good use.  So here’s what I did….I took a trip t0 my local 100 Yen Store […]

[Read more →]

On the evening on March 9th and into March 10, 1945 the United States sent 334 B-29’s into Tokyo to drop over 450,000 fire bombs on the Sumida District in Tokyo.  The resulting firestorm devastated almost 17 square miles of the city and approximately 100,000 people were killed as a result of the fire raid.  […]

[Read more →]

This weeks quote is from The Commoner: A Novel by John Burnham Schwartz that is loosely based on the experiences of the current empress of Japan as the first commoner to marry into the Japanese royal family.  The book is a bit of a page turner and there are a lot of things mentioned in […]

[Read more →]

It’s well known that space is at a premium in Japan but the innovations that arise from such dilemmas always surprise me.  Below is a series of photos showing a Japanese version of a three car garage in action.  This is not uncommon and the elevator is operated at a station off to the […]

[Read more →]

Today I took the trip into Tokyo for the first time since my arrival in Japan and I had my first Maiko or Geisha sighting!
It took me almost an hour and three different trains to get to Asaksua where this and the other photos were taken.  I was a little bit nervous about […]

[Read more →]

I think that Japan must be operated via remote control - I’m not kidding! On my coffee table there are no less than five remotes and most of the buttons are in Kanji! The living room is not the only place that there are remotes - each bedroom has two remotes. […]

[Read more →]

Japan is much as a remember it from our last stay and I am pleased to report that my limited Japanese skills don’t seem to have suffered that much from a ten year absence.  However, my ability to read Katakana (Japanese symbols for foreign words) is pretty much gone.  I can still recognize it when […]

[Read more →]