Safa and I went to the Seal Beach Pier (California) today during the trip to grandma’s. I decided to have fun with my Lensbaby Composer and Lomo effects as she walked down the pier. After being landlocked for a couple years it was nice to see the ocean. 70 degrees, breezy, salty air and faint [...]

Maybe — but probably not, at least not in the U.S. — there is a literary role for Twitter. That’s the premise behind an interesting Salon report on the latest cellphone-based fad in Japan (of course, Japan): keitai shôsetsu, or “cellphone fiction.” In short, it’s short short fiction, maybe 500 words or less, that was [...]

Besides Life Getting Complicated as my sabbatical leave begins, there is also the little something called research and writing that I must do. Unlike a certain friend who will remain unnamed who is planning on spending sabbatical time taking tennis and Photoshop lessons (okay, just in afternoons after a mornings of work), need to decide [...]

The other day on NPR there was a spot about “Smell Club,” a Japan-based web site where you can geotag smells from around the world. It’s an interesting notion to describe place and space via smells rather than the usual sights. The idea, as I understand it, is that once you come across a scent [...]

Well, at least this year the Japanese Prime Minister (Fukuda) had sense enough not to worship at Yasukuni Shrine on this the anniversary of the end of the Asia Pacific War. However, three ministers and two former PMs did. Sara and I visited Yasukuni for the first time just a couple weeks ago and went [...]

That’s about the only explanation I have for no posts in April (until now). Even now I shouldn’t be fiddling on the web while I have several chapters to read for my next class session. We’re reading Ian Condry’s book Hip-Hop Japan this week; had fun with it in class today as we talked about [...]

I’m excited. Students from my anime class (grads from my first-year writing seminar in the fall — oh heck, let’s just give their names: Levy and Kevin) informed me today of the upcoming U.S. release this summer of the latest animated film by Kon Satoshi (Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paranoia Agent). It’s called [...]

I saw Letters from Iwo Jima a few weeks ago on the invitation of a colleague and I guess I proved that I’m not a typical American by not overwhlemingly liking it as many others have. It’s a very good film — I especially liked the muted palette — and there was a certain (but [...]