When I take my nightly walks, I never know who or what I will encounter. One summer evening years ago I was taking photos from the rooftop of the Sogo Department Store. The sound of women’s voices distracted me from Yokohama’s cityscape. The chattering was earsplitting. The following is a loose translation of their conversational …
I live near a Buddhist temple. Each afternoon at 5 p.m. the Monk grabs the rope of the soft wooden log bell hammer and gives it a mighty swing. The hammer hits the temple bell and the sound echoes throughout the nearby neighborhoods. The sound of the bell chases away evil thoughts and spirits from …
JOY The road leading to the Kanagawa Prefecture Library in Yokohama is steep and passes by a sculpted couple dancing on a pedestal. Ah, dancing. One of the joys in life. In my younger days, I danced cheek-to-cheek with the women whose company I enjoyed. “Dancing is like dreaming with your feet,” Constanze Mozart (1762-1842) …
Woman Among the Bushes
Rodin’s Meditation The radio announcer warned of the approaching typhoon, but I was determined to get out of the apartment. For five solid days, I sat glued to my desk chair and humped over a 300-page manuscript. Painstakingly, I went line by line to root out misspelled words, ill-positioned semicolons, dangling modifiers, and other miscreants …
Tammachi Park is a brisk fifteen-minute walk from my apartment in Yokohama. I often walk through it on my way to a supermarket. Once in a while, I sit on a park bench and read. When I grow weary of reading, I observe vignettes of life unfolding in front of me. A mother watching her …
“Meet me in Bashamichi,” my friend texted me. He wanted to introduce me to a restaurant he recently discovered. “Where in Bashamichi?” I texted back. “In front of the sculpture.” “Sculpture?” “The one in front of the coffee shop.” A telling commentary of modern life when we refer to coffee shops as pinpoints on maps …
Have you ever lain on your back in bed and stared up at the bedroom ceiling? The other night I was following floaters swimming inside my eye back and forth, up and down, back and forth. One evening without warning, a strange happening took place. Photos from the past replaced the floaters. I hate looking …
Tonight, I decided to try my hand at writing using the first-person singular. The I. The almighty me, the pronoun referring to the man who stares at his self-absorbed image in the bathroom mirror. I am fearful of that pronoun. Whenever I use it, more than once a memory slithers out of my repressed past …
Ah, yes! Photography is a hobby of mine. Taking photos is an outlet for my creative urges. I enjoy manipulating them into reasonable facsimiles of photographic art. Yes, I admit. Photo editing software gave me the tools to make up for my lack of natural photographic talent and skills. But there is a plus side. …