Well, this is it. I think this may be the last blog post I’ll be making. My last entry was in January (8 months ago). Facebook has taken over the world since then. And my last day working at Harvard (host of my blog) will be next week (August 16, 2013). Combined, I think this […]
Happy New Year, folks! Once again, I’ve lost all track of time (and responsibility) and neglected my blog. However, this time around I just may have a few legitimate reasons for my unintentional hiatus. First, we went to Australia. On December 21 (the day the world was supposed to end) we flew to Sydney and […]
I’m boring. I’m the first to admit it. A fun weekend evening for me is to go out to eat (or order take-out back the states) and then return home with some friends to play card games or board games. I’ve never done drugs, I’ve still never been drunk, and my biggest run-in with the […]
Last night, Randy’s HR department took us out to dinner as a sort of belated “Welcome-to-Tokyo” gesture. They brought us to this fancy restaurant near Azabu-Juban called Gai-Gai. I didn’t know what to expect since their website is only in Japanese, but when I read the English menu at the table I was relieved to […]
Could somebody please try to explain to me, preferably in basic junior high school level English, how this whole swing state phenomenon works? I can easily understand how an entire state can be consistently Democrat (MA, NY, CT, RI, CA) or consistently Republican (AL, TX, OK, ND, SD). But I really have a hard time […]
Today was a good day. I’m going to come off as the lamest expat in history, but I was excited today to discover a new store in Tokyo. It seems that in Japan 7-11 (yes, the convenience store chain) operates large department stores in Japan called Ito Yokado. I went to the branch in Omori […]
After our whirlwind tour of the southern coast of Japan (Hiroshima, Miyajima, Kursashiki, Osaka, Nagoya) we returned to Tokyo and our visiting friend, Peter, was able to start seeing what Tokyo was all about. Because of my work, Peter went off on his own for large portions of the day and we caught up in […]
We had different plans for the next day, but a typhoon was fast approaching and the weather was expected to turn sour. Plus, a day in Kyoto was simply not enough time for the exploration a city like that warrants. It’s probably the only major city in all of Japan that was spared in World […]
Our friend, Peter’s, visit to Tokyo was a success. Randy and I took a few vacation days and the three of us traveled to southwest Japan for a few days. Since Randy was already in Osaka on a business trip we followed him down there on his last day of work. We arrived before he […]
We’ve been back in Tokyo for two and a half weeks and I’m feeling rather accomplished, I must admit. We were back but only a week when we welcomed our first out-of-town guest. Technically, Jennifer was our first guest back in June or July, but she stayed with us while on a business trip and […]