I’ve always looked at buying a couch as one of the final milestones of “becoming an adult.” Not a futon or a foam couch that sinks half a foot lower when you sit on it, but a good and proper single-purpose couch that weighs more than one person can carry. A couch that [...]
In which alephito and I share a family moment during the late summer in Vancouver (photograph).
Yeah, so, shortly after paying the price of a small car for the privilege of tight seating and gastrically taxing food, I kind of slipped into a coma of daily logistics and totally stopped writing, much to my own mortification. I thought it would be good to start jotting down reflections of the years [...]
I have a confession to make. It’s the kind of confession that you normally wouldn’t bring up in mixed company, or with people you don’t know very well, but the blank buffer of cyberspace gives me enough false courage that I can talk openly. The whole thing happened a number of months back, [...]
When we first set off to live in Japan, five to ten years sounded like a good amount of time to spend battling robots and learning to be ninja. However, angry robots are a bit thin on the ground, and stealthy is hard to come by when you stick out like a sore thumb. [...]
A couple of days ago I received an e-mail from my mom informing me that she had to put her dog Apollo, a white standard poodle, to sleep on Thursday. Since then she’s been sorting through old photographs, gathering a visual overview of Apollo’s time here and I thought I’d add a few memories [...]
I’ve never been a fan of shopping, unless it’s for electronics or the occasional thrift store foray, so you can imagine how happy I am that the three pairs of pants I brought to Japan are falling apart. Falling apart is an understatement – the hems are gone and the fabric is wearing thin [...]
It seems fitting that I’m writing a retrospective of our first year in Japan while sitting in a karaoke box listening to kzi croon “Eyes Without a Face”. After all, Japan popped my karaoke cherry late one summer night after skinny-dipping in the moonlit ocean. Subsequently, karaoke has seen us through the [...]
I have a new job and a not-so-new car. The car is old, perhaps as old as Japan itself, and is approximately the size of an ice cube, but it is a car nonetheless and for this I am grateful. You don’t need a car to get around in Hamamatsu and the neighboring [...]
So I finally got around to taking a few pictures of our bare but warmly lit apartment (click here for the set).
All rooms are represented somewhat accurately, except for Auz’s room which is not represented at all, because, well, it is not warmly lit. Don’t be fooled by my mad optic skill(z), our [...]