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May 14, 2024
 

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WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST

COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jan 27, 2002
You've got mail
It was one of those sharp, pithy statements that raise the hair on the back of your neck. Similar perhaps to "Godzilla Lives!" or "The Creature Walks Among Us!" or "Quayle for President!"
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jan 13, 2002
If we could all so depend on the kindness of strangers . . .
The Japanese are renowned for their kindness to foreigners. I tell myself this late at night as I shiver in my pajamas, my wife having once again swiped all the bed covers. And as the chatter of my teeth quickly makes it too noisy to sleep, I remember that many foreigners -- especially those from non-Western lands -- consider the Japanese reputation for benevolence to be exaggerated.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Dec 23, 2001
Beating the game -- at last
"Dad, could you show me how to make a jump shot?" So my younger son once requested as we stood beneath a hoop in his junior-high playground.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Dec 9, 2001
Sharing your daze with a studyholic
My wife takes a scalpel to her schedule and carves up blocks of time. First to go are the hours she spends teaching Japanese, the hours she rides the commuter train, and then the additional hours and hours she uses for preparation.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Nov 18, 2001
Next stop . . . the Twilight Zone
I've heard that the greatest challenge facing linguists today lies not in understanding how the brain encodes language, nor in mapping the lexicons of the world's vanishing dialects, nor in any other such grinding academic chore.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Nov 4, 2001
Just cloning around
I am sitting in a pub with two other foreign husbands of Japanese women. We are about the same age and build, with the same twitchy faces of men who have lived too long as outsiders in a nation full of insiders.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Oct 21, 2001
Like father, like son
My elder son sits across from me during supper and clubs me with the following questions: "Why can't Japanese die, Dad? How come it's so hard for them?" Not your usual dinnertime poser, perhaps, but we dads have to be ready for anything. I pause only briefly before delivering what I consider to be a brilliant answer.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Oct 7, 2001
Ichiro, Ichiro, Ichinooo!
"All the world's a stage," a well-known English playwright declared in "As You Like It," adding: "And all the men and women merely players . . . "
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Sep 16, 2001
Come together, right now
"East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet," Rudyard Kipling once wrote.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Sep 2, 2001
'P' words fly over boorish behavior
"Men," my wife announces, "are nothing but pigs."
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Aug 19, 2001
Survival of the cutest at sweltering summer weddings
For most Japanese, the broiling heat of August evokes images of shaved ice, cold watermelon, chilled beer and ghosts -- all of which are supposed to add a shiver to the season.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Aug 5, 2001
When love breaks down
Yes -- I was beachball-eyed with love.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jul 22, 2001
Breaking up (all that fat) is so very hard to do
While my stomach is not particularly gregarious, neither would one call it meek.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jul 1, 2001
The importance of getting the vote out
Reality rarely bites my brain until I have downed my first cup of morning coffee, and sometimes not even several such cups are enough to juice me from dream mode out into open-eyed awareness.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jun 17, 2001
Ms. Popularity unleashes charm while her poodle mows the grass
"Look at it this way," one of my mother's cornier friends blabbed to her when she learned of my engagement, "You're not losing a son, you're gaining a daughter."
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jun 3, 2001
Lessons in crisis mismanagement
All my life I have been behind the times. I wore my bell-bottoms for years after the fashion had died, and in fact only abandoned them after they had shrunk up and become sort of bell-knickers.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
May 20, 2001
Audrey Hepburn's neck
"I don't understand cats and I don't understand women," confessed a foreign friend, half to me and half to his mug of beer. I leaned in closer to listen.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
May 6, 2001
Don't forget your TOEFL
With my older son now poking his way through the college-application process, pursuing schools mostly in the States and often being mistaken for a nonnative English speaker, I am uneasily reminded of a time 20 years past when I too applied for higher education from within Japan.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Apr 15, 2001
Eyeballing a personal language coach
Upon first meeting my wife-to-be, my entire future flashed before me. Already I could foresee this girl as my life partner, the mother of my children and the person I would wrestle with for legroom in the kotatsu.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Mar 21, 2001
Confessions of an outsize fashion cretin
If it is true that clothes make the man, then I confess to being poorly constructed.
Three men rearrested over brokering of overseas prostitution
A woman speaks of her experience of being sent to Macau by an overseas prostitution broker during an interview in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward on April 8.
Money stolen via online transfers up fivefold in Tokyo
Special fraud cases in Tokyo in which stolen money was sent via online banking services grew some fivefold from the previous year in 2023.
How the discovery of a giant sword in Nara offers clues into ancient Japan
Archaeologists say a 1,600-year-old wooden coffin at the Tomio Maruyama tumulus in the city of Nara was kept in good condition probably because it was protected by a layer of clay and copper ions that had seeped out of the mirrors that were buried together.
In first month of operations, ride-hailing services used more than taxis in Tokyo
As of last Sunday, ride-hailing services, which use personal vehicles to offer paid rides, had been used a total of 12,628 times in five areas.
Tech giants start to treat Southeast Asia like the next big thing
Attendees arrive for Microsoft's event on AI technologies in Jakarta on April 30.
In a rare event, the Northern Lights show up in Hokkaido
The Northern Lights in Nayoro, Hokkaido, on Saturday
Is black the new green for Japan’s flagging tea farmers?
George Guttridge-Smith brews tea at Kyoto Obubu Tea Farm in Wazuka, Kyoto Prefecture, where he serves as head of international development.
Japan's logistics firms seek partnerships to cope with driver shortage
Japan Post CEO Tetsuya Senda (right) and his Seino Transportation counterpart Satoshi Takahashi announce their companies' agreement on joint long-haul truck operations, in Tokyo on Thursday.
How the discovery of a giant sword in Nara offers clues into ancient Japan
Archaeologists say a 1,600-year-old wooden coffin at the Tomio Maruyama tumulus in the city of Nara was kept in good condition probably because it was protected by a layer of clay and copper ions that had seeped out of the mirrors that were buried together.
Unlike 10 years ago, Japan's new security bill sparks little debate
The Lower House starts discussing a security clearance bill on April 19 in Tokyo.

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