He wasn't there. I had wanted to introduce my cohort of Write of Passage to a local pizza joint near where I live in Shizuoka City, Japan. It is close to my heart and even closer to my stomach. But the shop was closed, so I returned, pipe

Many years ago, I went kayak surfing at a beach near Hamamatsu City in Japan. It was a beautiful morning. After a few waves, my friend and I began to talk while taking a break. He turned and asked me, “Aren’t you learning to glide?” He wasn’t talking

I taught English at the Fuji campus of Tokoha University at the foot of Mount Fuji for over twenty years. One of my duties was making English entrance exams with my Japanese colleagues. The exams were administered to students at the universities that are part of our Tokoha Gakuen family

Here in Japan, I am an outsider. People seldom ask me about philosophy or politics. My fellow English professors don’t ask me about the finer points of grammar. The question I am most commonly asked is why I walk barefoot. "I just wanted to find out what it