Notes from the 'Nog

The heat had come back. And with it, David Attenborough. When the simple act of making a decision caused me to break a sweat, I returne...

Here we are on the cusp of Obon. I thought I'd exhume a piece I wrote about the holiday back in 1998, which netted me first prize in a ...

  http://www.deepkyoto.com/children-of-water/ "An Interview with film-makers Roger Walch and Ted Taylor I love film-making… I love to ...

Most Japanese women, built as slim as they are, don't have much in the hip department. But that doesn't prevent some of them from a...

Everybody on the train looked exhausted. Granted it was a summertime Friday, but it wasn't yet nine in the morning. Even the school k...

Nine merciful hours of sleep later, we were in front of the train station waiting for a bus. Behind us was the tall statue of Basho. Fo...

We moved quite slowly the next morning, downing canned coffee and showering with a hose. At six-thirty we started up the fire road where we...

Miki and I wanted to escape Kyoto's Gion Matsuri like the plague. We still had to finish the Yama-no-be section of the TSH. For wha...

"Etymologically speaking, a breath is not neutral or bland-- it's cooked air; we live in a constant simmering. There is a furnace...

Here is something I wrote last winter. It started life out as part two of this post , yet I'd hoped it would grow up into something bi...

Bizarre weather today. It's July, I've got less than two months to go here in Kyoto. Lately, I've been peeling away my work and...

Ezaki Mitsuru was having another exhibition down at Gallery Mu- un . So it was that Miki and I, along with KJ John and Sage, spend a lo...

Waiting at the stoplight. Down the hill I see a figure with bushy straw colored hair, wearing a cape and walking deliberately in the rain. ...

"The threat of extinction, be it to animals, languages, ways of life, human skills is a wake up call to cease believing someone else wi...

I just got home from Osaka, after a quick dinner at Cafe Absinthe, beneath the photos of some of the 100 famous Japanese peaks that Wes cl...

Adam sent me this interesting and thought-provoking article. Miki and I make a guest appearance at the end. On the turntable: "Briti...

The duck raised its body out of the water, flapping its wings madly as if trying to life the river from its bed. Then it settled its body b...

Warai Hotoke smiles to hide tears. The view of the factory billowing smoke beyond the ridge. On the turntable: Roy Ayers, "Coffy"

The day after the Katsuragi walk, I found myself on a train heading back down that way. Miki and I plan to do the next section of the TSH i...

The weather report throughout the week had proved schizophrenic, but the clouds Saturday seemed encouraging. So it was that I met up with O...