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What did we do for two weeks, on our recent trip to California? Eat. Non-stop.
Somehow all my San Francisco friends now work with, around or in restaurants (and those that don’t, have a home kitchen to ridicule most professional restaurants). Two weeks of uninterrupted home-cuisine, haute-cuisine, haute-concept, cheap Indian, puntastic Thai (seriously: “Thai-tanic salad”? really?), Kubrickian American (way up there in the mountains) and near-daily morning brunches featuring lovely crispy bacon and heaps of Californian cheese.

Guess who was overcome with joy at the thought of a simple, light, miso soup upon getting back home…

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There were many positively awesome things about Scott & Cassie’s wedding ceremony, but their choice of reading, as powerful yet appropriate reminder of the state of marriage law these days, was a particularly cool one.

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Heard at the Japanese souvenir shop of the Japanese Tea Garden:

Very Large White Woman: I am looking for these Japanese dolls…

Japanese shop employee: ah… Kokeshi, yes, we have them here.

Very Large White Woman: No, no… Not this kind. The ones that fit inside one another.

Japanese shop employee: You mean… Russian nesting dolls?

Very Large White Woman: Yes! Got any of those?

Japanese shop employee: …

by ·Comments Off on Lost in Irony

It is just mind-boggling how many Japanese have come away convinced that I must be a US citizen, on account of my shirt having a tiny US flag shoulder patch (right above where it proclaims in large gold stitch letters that I am a “Boy Scout of America”).

On the other hand, this lack in the whole irony concept, puts some of the clothing commonly spotted through the streets of Japan in a radically new, slightly scary, perspective…

by ·Comments Off on Election Fatigue…

Dear local Kyoto-fu LDP candidate for the upcoming upper-house election:

True: I cannot cast a vote in this election and sway your chances either direction.

But let me assure you that, if you keep insisting on circling my block multiple times, every morning between 8 and 8:30, inane election slogans blaring from your van’s speakers at top volume, I will be more than happy to contribute to your historical legacy by setting post at the closest grassy knoll with whatever long-range weapon I can get my hands on.

Thanks.