Rikuto Sees His Great Grandmother and First Snow

In my last post, Making Mochi in the Mountains, I told you it was my first time to to make Japanese mochi. I wasn’t the only person doing something for the first time. Rikuto sees snow for the first time Our trip to the mochi ceremony took us way up into the mountains on a winding road surrounded by snow. We were all surprised snow had fallen since it was […]

Ramsay Ramblings 12/21/2007

My last Ramsay Ramblings proved to be quite controversial when I touched on the topic of half-Japanese children. Today’s ramblings are far more tame. I am not your maid! This line is my wife’s favorite English expression, which she learned from my mum when we went to the UK on our honeymoon. Mami is very good to me, and even though I’m very lazy when it comes to helping around […]

Long distance friendships

I woke up this morning to find an email from one of my best childhood friends – talk about a pleasant surprise! We last made contact about ten years ago, so it was great to hear from him. It got me thinking about how people maintain long-distance friendships. When I first came to Japan on a homestay, my great Scottish aunt asked me to track down her pen-pal, Kubo Hide-san, […]