Pigeon's Poop

What is your special jewelry? Something that has special meanings to you. Maybe something that you made a special memory with? Maybe your special one gave it to you? Perhaps there is more than one jewelry that is special to you. And perhaps it may not be jewelry. In Japan, it is not unusual for married men not wearing their marriage band. This may sound funny but it is not seen as , in a way, curiously and mysteriously bad as it might be in western countries. My friends couple bought watches instead of marriage rings and  my sister and her husband also have matching watches instead of an engagement ring. It is actually more common than you may think. Sometimes men just do not like wearing a marriage ring,   or sometimes they cannot wear them for their work situations. The reasons may vary but I think it's a pretty cool thing to do. There are many very special pieces of jewelry I own.  One of them is a headdress piece my friend...

As I started this blog in both languages (English and Japanese),  I re-discovered the difficulty of translation. There are many English words I don't even know what they are translated in Japanese. For instance, I still don't know what "degree"(academic, not temperature) is in Japanese. I don't know how to explain some English expressions that cannot be translated directly into Japanese because we simply don't use them in our culture and  this applies vise versa.   Feedback was one of the words I learned when I moved to California. I did not know the word in Japanese, and still don't know what is called in Japanese. I was in a language school in LA at that time,  and was put into three or four people's conversation group.  The assignment was to get to know my group members, write a paper about a person I pick from the members then we were going to read in next class. I became close to one Swiss girl (or German, I don't remember) ...

If I could choose to be re-born in next life, I really don't want to be human again. But I probably don't mind being a cat. Preferably a domesticated one.  I have a French bulldog back in Osaka. When I type bulldog, I always mistype bullgod...well because they are like god.  He's my god.   I never liked cats so much until I met this one. She's my muse. My partner and I have a cat in Brooklyn. My family back in Japan always had dogs. We had Akita dog, which we ended up finding out he wasn't Akita but something called Mikawa dog after his death, and he had really funny barking. It sounded like "Cola! Cola!" when he barked. I was told he initially had a problem with his voice and the surgery he had made it worse.  At that time, we had another dog, which was crossbreed  and it was a huge white long hair female dog. I was really little so she may have even looked bigger to me,  and as far as I remember s...

Not too long ago, rather recent, I had an opportunity to visit Hiroshima.   August 6th was when Hiroshima was exposed to  the first nuclear blast during the world war II in 1945. In Japan, many schools take kids to visit either Hiroshima or Nagasaki  to learn the history, not intended to teach them to hate America, or the American people, not telling them we were the only victims so that the kids hopefully understand how we, as mankind, could be nothing but the greatest threat to one another and the importance of making world peace. I remember when I was in mid school, the school took us to Nagasaki. The city of Nagasaki, as well as Hiroshima, was completely rebuilt and was beautiful. It was so hard to believe these cities were completely destroyed once. When I was in the museum in Hiroshima looking at the exhibits,  I remembered the same feeling  as I had when I visited Jewish museum in Berlin. I do not doubt that ...

August, to me, is always the end month of the summer. By the end of August, I just could feel the certain nostalgia in the air. In Japan, in the mid August we have a period of time to celebrate  our ancestors spirits called Obon. (For more detailed information check out  HERE .) When I was a child, this Obon period meant nothing to do with ancestors but fun trip to my grandfather's hometown in Shiga, super countryside of Japan. What's so crazy about going to this "super countryside" is it only really takes less than two hours by car without traffic from Osaka. Come to think of it, Japan is crazy like that. When you come to the cities of Japan you easily forget these cities are  still not too far from the mountain regions. For example, you could enjoy the downtown in Osaka and enjoy the urban city life during the daytime, then you take a bus for less than an hour to  the amazing historic hot spring town. Cities are so condensed...