This isn't Japan related, even tangentially, but it's something I was thinking about tonight. When I was younger, after that primordial period of Sesame Street and Wheel of Fortune, we had no television in the house. The two we had met mysterious fates: one stopped working, and the other was just gone one day, disappearing in the night without ( Read more... )

My grandmother died today. I sat on the Cathedral lawn in bright sunlight, pressing the cellphone to my ear, a thin and immediate connection to the room where she was struggling to breathe. My mother held the phone up to Grandma's ear, and I told her in two minutes all the things I hope she knew: she was one of my favorite people, who made my life ( Read more... )

Nick: "What's the one day a year... you can go in the..."
Devin: "Birthday."
Nick: "How the hell did you know what I was talking about?"

Without a plan on New Year's Eve? Here's a tip: pirate parties are always fun. On New Year's Eve they roam the streets in modified schoolbuses, harpooning the cars of unwary partygoers. Find one by standing on a promising streetcorner and listening for the screams and the sound of blunderbuss shots. You'll need to grab hold and hoist yourself up ( Read more... )

So Thursday night I fell asleep on the couch of my best friend from lower school's high school friend. That was after we got out of his hot tub and heated pool in the backyard. After a cocktail party at the house of another guy I've known since kindergarten, with people I haven't seen in eight years. I think we all look pretty much the same but I ( Read more... )

Why does Microsoft Word think "ahold" is not a word?

Eileen: "Hi Devin!"
Me: "Hi Leenie! What's up?"
Eileen: "I called to tell you what happened in Sunday school today. All the girls in the class were saying that their brothers were annoying, their little brothers and big brothers were annoying, and I was the only one who didn't say my brother was annoying. I said you were wonderful."

M: My gentle knight doth speak gently, but, lo, what woman ever compared herself to the moon's beauty and triumphed? Thrust me not onto an altar of such height that I cannot hope to survive the fall. Know that I am much afeared of heights, so in comparing me to the moon, you mistake my nature, sir ( Read more... )

I saw Johnny Depp on the bus today.

I'm also writing a sitcom in Chinese.

I know I've been thinking too much about where in Japan I want to teach when I'm watching a car commercial and I find myself thinking, "That place has mountains. I wonder what it would be like to live there." Or when I have dreams in which I read long guidebook entries on areas of Japan that don't actually exist ( Read more... )