One of these days I would love to just drive around that area in autumn. Maybe when I retire. Beautiful photos! Thanks for the HSBI!

Happy anniversary! That beer mug is Japan size. Those drinking parties I mentioned in one of my posts this past week — that's the size we all use when we drink. Might explain why everyone gets so drunk

Looks like a nice campus! That mascot (at least the status near the chair) looks like Lou Ferrigno from the Hercules movies.

This one read familiar too! Too much work lately... I am slowly going crazy. Or suffering from a bout of severe deja vu. I've never heard that small contention about Take me Home, Country Road. I also

You know I could have sworn I commented on all your posts this past week... I know I read at least this one, because I remember it as I reread it now. Maybe I just forgot to comment? I think I'm losing

60 words in 15 days seems pretty good to me. すし と みず ください haha. Very useful! The reply you receive would probably be: そうですね！にほんごをじょうずですね！

That reminds me of the old Groucho quip: Here's to our wives and girlfriends... may they never meet!

haha join the club 😃 Many of us have been yelling for many many years. If you want a great book about all this, look up "Dogs and Demons" by Alex Kerr. Here it is It is slightly out of date

I choose to be optimistic and think that we will come out of this tailspin (both in Japan and in the US) before disaster, but who knows. I hope anyway!

More loyalty from the company side might fix both things. I can imagine that companies that actually paid a fair wage instead of cutting wages as low as possible so that the CEO can have another bonus

Yeah it's hard. When the entire culture has been based on these things for the past 80 years, change isn't going to be easy. But I think it is coming — finally!

I've heard that same story so many times. Often it involves the weird twist where the gaijin is angry about how low his salary is, finally complains, only to find that the Japanese are making less than

I think that was more a thing of the war generation, not the Boomers. There used to be a joke that the first and only thing a man would tell his wife among getting home was "Meshi, furo, neru!"

The common refrain among the young here is, “Change will happen when all the Shōwa generation retires or dies.” Technically, that means anyone born during Emperor Hirohito’s reign, but in practice it mostly

As a lifelong Cubs fan, I am definitely right there to the arguments about team spending imbalances. But at the same time, what the Dodgers have been able to do is amazing and should be appreciated, and

Best way to get attention these days: make crazy claims about Bitcoin's price.

Wow, what a story! I look forward to part 2. Glad you could get a new well.

I'm not sure how much there is to write. It's about like the stereotypes of the worst offices in the US, but it's everywhere in Japan, not just the worst ones. I don't really have any direct experience.

Hive has fallen on hard times. Right now, I don't know how to get more activity on specific communities. If the price can recover, that will help. If we can stop the DHF from bleeding money, that will

That's the biggest problem with the system. These proposals promise the world, then after they pass, we never hear anything. Not an update, not a word on how the money is being spent. All we know is that