Sakata Central Hotel

... flew back to New York for good and bad luck. I met Hiroyuki and Keiko there as planned, but as unplanned, I took a train 100 blocks in the wrong way, got ripped off by a taxi, and shat on by a pigeon (on the forehead no less).

And now, I'm home. Early retirement is good for the time being. I'm in no rush to be an office dogsbody or pencil pusher. But, when you don't have anything to do, your thoughts get really far out, and so I am trying to find that ...

... by family, money, pride, emotion, security, ambition, psychology, and other things accepted as a part of the diversity of English-speaking societies. The Japanese are diverse too. Their common culture is window-dressing compared to their common humanity, and I can’t take any assessment of their culture seriously without some sense that the assessor knew them as people first.

The last theme of my blogs has been my ongoing criticism of others ...

... needs to make sense or matters. It overlooks Kisakata and the Sea of Japan, and kinda feels like watching an opera from the left side of the second floor balcony. The perspective you get is this field of vision that feels somewhat off-center. There's unfortunately a huge tree that makes seeing the left part of town blotchy.

A highlight was staying in ...

... swingset, one junglegym, one slide, and a water fountain. We killed some time for a little while playing on the swings and crawling around on the Jungle gym, until someone rembered they baseball set we still had.
We quickly devised a game of 3 on 3. Rob, Tyler, and Lucas challenged Satoshi, Yusuke, and Garrett, while Aaron played all-time pitcher and I filled the role of ...

Efter en extremt lång resa (Arlanda-Frankfurt med flyg, typ två timmar, Frankfurt-Narita, nästan elva timmars flyg, Narita-Haneda, en och en halv timmes bussfärd, Haneda-Akita, en timmes flyg, sen en timme med buss till Akita-Eki och till sist en och en halv timme med tåg ut till Kisakata, vid Akitas kust) kom vi äntligen fram till Kisakata, en liten och inte så spännande, men mysig och väldigt inaka fiskestad där alla hus har fina tak. Trötta efter resan och ganska ...

... 8220;I’ll never dance again!”). The teacher’s effort has been to draw elaborate illustrations of mouths in profile that convey -- rather abstractly -- where to put your tongue and teeth in order to make an unvoiced TH-sound, as in “thanks” and a voiced TH-sound, as in “though.” As might be expected, our battle against fifteen years of undeviating Japanese pronunciation has so far been a losing one.

... that is, I’m not 44 kilos. The bad news is that I’m not the middle reading either. Still, I refuse to believe that the 2 kilos I’ve gained since the last time I checked (some time last year) is all fat, not unless that’s the natural result of eating less and exercising more, which defies all I know.

No, the gain is pure muscle. That’s right ...

... school children and forced to bounce basketballs off my forehead at the time. I did see him carried out of the gym and to the ambulance. O-daiji ni ojiisan, o-daiji ni. (O-daiji ni means get well / better, and ojiisan means gramps). Kegai shinai yo ni ne. Excluding the ruptured achilles, no other casualties were recorded. The five-minute, all member ...

Yesterday, I gave a speech on "Fishing Canneries in Alaska" to a group of advanced English speakers. More to come on that at a different point in time. But, after the speech, I was talking with one of the members about Kisakata, and she said that Kisakata is "one of the best places to live in Akita." At first, I thought she confused her words (like best for worst or Oga for Kisakata). But, she was both serious and genuine. Reason being, whenever I tell people I'm from ...

... remember being enthralled with that aspect of them roughly zero percent of the time. But then, there are also people more outwardly focused than I who soak up their peers' interesting biographical facts like a paper towel. These are the true angels among humankind and it's a good thing these people exist so I can face them and, with my eyebrows raised, endlessly divulge and lionize my fascinating experiences. I guess that's what a blog is for too.