I just remembered one of the funniest things I ever heard. About seven years ago I got trapped in a conversation with a roomful of girls, and the topic of the conversation of course turned to the topic it always turns to in a roomful of only girls, that is, feminine hygeine products. Anyway, the funny part: This one Chinese girl admitted that the first time she used tampons, she had no idea how to use them and she ended up shoving in 7 or 8, and then proceeded to go about her normal business for the day. (I’m hoping there’s a Confucian equivalent to Kegels.) That story still makes…

I saw something pretty funny at the carwash last week. A young couple was washing their new yellow subcompact in the stall next to mine. The girl was scrubbing the hood of the car with a white rag and noticed it was picking up yellow specks, so showed it to the guy. “Stop!,” he exclaimed, and began inspecting the hood for damage. “This carwashing soap we bought is stripping the paint…” When I told them it was just yellow sand from China, they looked at me like I was crazy. So I showed them my car, which is gunmetal grey and looks like a yellow-speckled trout after the rain dries…

So I have this female coworker, right? She’s off for a year on maternity leave now, but she has been working at the company from before I joined, and we’ve always been tight. She’s always had my back, and I have hers, too. So it kills me to say this, but she has given the stupidest name to her newborn baby boy, and that’s kind of unforgivable in my book. The name? “Shishimaru.” The kanjis used are for “lion” and “circle.” (I dare not write it in Japanese cuz this page will surely float to the top of the search results – for now filled with pets and monster movies…

This weekend provided enough points of interest to allow my free rambling mode. Nam’s older sister, Nok arrived at 7AM on Saturday morning. So we woke up at 4:00 and drove down to the car ferry in the neighboring city of Awaji-shi (until last year: Tsuna-cho) to catch the 5:30 boat. As ferry rides go, it was pretty unremarkable. I took a couple shots of the sun rising over the ocean, then I fell asleep on the carpet of the break room and apparently snored everybody from one side of the boat to the other. The one funny thing that happened was when I was taking a crap. Now normally…

My bro is moving back to the states after living here the past few years. He left on a flight out of KIX early this morning. My dad came last week and they went down to Kyushu together on a kind of sayonara tour (Adam lived down there before coming to Kansai). My dad is leaving for the airport later today. I’m taking the afternoon off to have lunch and see him off. Expats who stay here for longer periods all have memories of people leaving; sometimes it seems that life is just a series of goodbyes. For me, these next few months will be tough: My wife is also…

“Make me one with everything.”

A couple weeks ago a calf was born on my coworker’s mini dairy farm. These mini-farms are prevalent on the more remote parts of this island, often limited to less than a dozen cows. Anyhow, I got around to asking how the calf was doing today and was told it had gotten sick and died. This was of course sad to hear, as this is apparently a fairly rare occurrence in this day and age. My coworker said the last time a calf died on their farm was over fifteen years ago. He said that the mother was in great distress for a few days, udders swollen with milk and…