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Two things I miss
I actually get better chicken in Thailand, though. So I guess the two things would have to be rear wheel drive and the SR-20DE engine. Don’t get me wrong, the…
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Social Insurance Operation Center (Japan)
This is a heads up to anybody trying to get in touch with the ?????????? (Social Insurance Operation Center) from overseas. The old telephone number listed on all of their…
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Nam Opened for Yoshimoto!
Well, this was certainly unexpected when I said we were going to see Yoshimoto perform in Bangkok this past weekend: This story actually belongs to Nam – so let her…
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Yoshimoto Entertainment in Thailand
This time we’re off to see Yoshimoto perform in Bangkok at the Imperial Park Queens Hotel. The organizer is an old friend of Nam’s and he came to our wedding…
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SDS-WAVE??? (Super Discount Shop rip off)
I ordered a Coolpix for a friend through an online electronics shop a couple days ago after finding the cheapest price on kakaku.com. These are the fuckers in question: http://www.sds-wave.com…
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Would you like some ketchup on that shit sandwich?
No? How about a tasty glass of water from the Yodogawa? The Osaka municipal government’s Water Bureau plans to sell bottles of highly purified tap water from Yodogawa river in…
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Japanese Hospital Suckage
Would it suffice to say that I spent 7 hours today waiting to get treated for a common cold, then got overcharged, and then got written the wrong prescription? Or…
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The Russo-Japanese War
We have a photo book on this war inherited from my grandfather somewhere back home. I used to browse through it a lot when I was little without ever understanding…
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WHERE’S THE BEEF?
HERE. Just in time for my last-minute feeding on all things quintessentially nihon. Here’s to the next million, and the next, and the next… I’ve been waiting, patiently, for three…
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Passing the Torch
My time is almost up; the next wave of invaders is already here. I have seen them on the streets and I hear them on the trains. I leave the…
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A Prison Camp Memoir
Excerpts from another great memoir over on the JPRI site: “The radio went dead. All the servants had long disappeared–stealing everything they could carry. I locked all the doors and…
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Japanese “Lawsuit” Guitars
They are known as lawsuit guitars because they are of such good quality (often matching or even surpassing the original Fenders and Gibsons they replicate), that: Around 1981, though, Fender,…
