This is where I write. Mostly about things said to me, things I overheard, or things I only heard in my mind. Carrd is my landing page...
Last summer I made a new friend at a weekly bar meetup. He was also an ex-pat, so we had that in common. After the meetups, we'd usually continue chatting for an hour or two about this and that. We got along really well quite quickly. His hobby was traveling all over Japan. He had visited nearly every prefecture in just a couple of years. On the other hand, I've only been to a few over the past…
As far as uninvited tunes that intrude into my psyche before I even brush my teeth go, this is a pretty great one! Like most songs by The Ramones, the melody is so enjoyable that you forget it's a punk song. Humming it to yourself, you realize it could have been a 70s pop song instead of a punk anthem. What would it sound like if The Carpenters covered it? Or The Mamas & the Papas? It would work,…
I was introduced to this song the way most of us probably were: the 2008 MacBook Air envelope reveal commercial . At that time, I was a huge Apple fanboy and watching their keynotes was genuinely one of the highlights of my year (kind of dark times for me). I was instantly gaga over the sexy, sleek design. It was the first computer I had tech-lust for, despite the unimpressive performance specs.…
How am I supposed to respond to that? For most of my life, I've kept my hair fairly short and neat. I was a sweaty boy who became a sweaty man, and this has always been the way. And as I moved to Japan and started cutting my own hair fairly proficiently, this made the most sense. I did detour in college and grew my hair long. That was a direct result of the cultural impact of The Lord of the Rings…
I'm currently culling some of my least-used electronics. It's a gentle process in which the first step is getting rid of things that simply don't work or are too difficult to fix. As predicted when these devices were first released, this has been primarily a lot of iPod nanos with swollen, difficult-to-replace batteries. But the ones with life in them are getting a second (or third or fourth)…
Earlier this spring, my parents visited me in Japan. To be reductive, I'd describe my mother as the liberal, free-spirited type. On the contrary, my stepfather is conservative and traditional. Somehow, they mostly get along with each other, and so do my sister and I with them. We have learned to tune out things said that we don't agree with for the sake of harmony. It's the only way, isn't it? On…