a Nick in Time

Month: March 2013

  • Tokyo Spring revisited

    Editor’s note: The following is an updated version of the last blog post. This new version will be published as a column in the Tampa Bay Current. If you want to skip past all of the words, brand new photos from Shinjuku Park, along with snappy captions, are at the bottom of the page. The…

  • Tokyo Spring

    Spring has sprung in Tokyo, Japan. It started about two weeks ago with allergy season. I won’t describe my own symptoms, because that will end everything for everyone before we even get started. But for two days, it was bad. And then it was over. For others, hay fever season ran for over a week.…

  • Taxes success!

    [Gross generalization alert] There are three things the Japanese excel at: paperwork, meetings and forming lines. Japanese children are taught from a very young age how to stand in line. Lisa tells me how when she was in kindergarten her teachers taught the children to touch their fingers to the shoulders of the person standing…

  • Directions revisited

    Editor’s note: Again, this is a blog post from the past that I updated for a newspaper column. Thought the new version was better than the old, so I hope you enjoy it the second time around.   My life has become dependent on a little blue dot. This little blue dot I am referring…

  • The Japanese grocery store, or “What the hell is that?”

    Last Saturday night I was in a yakitori restaurant eating raw chicken. That’s right, you heard me. Raw chicken. Back home in the States, we are taught to never ever, ever, ever, never, ever eat raw chicken. Don’t even touch it if there is a hint of pink. But here in Japan, it is perfectly…