Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
ESPN PUNS LINSANITY
The war of the words is hotting up, and it's not all nice. From the Jon Stewart "Daily Show" to late-night comedians and ESPN
headline writers, the Linsanity of Jeremy Lin's ascendance to overnight superstardom in the NBA has caused a stir fry. Not all of it nice.
First, ESPN broadcast a mistake that may have gone unnoticed if people didn't listen closely. On February 15, an ESPN analyst was discussing Lin's faults while commenting on the Knicks win against Sacramento and she said:. "If there is a chink in the armor, where can Lin improve his game?" she said,
Did she just say "chink", as in the racially offensive slur used against those of Asian descent? How did that pass by the FCC or ESPN overlords?
A lot of sensitive people want to know. Me, too.
Of course, this being America, land of the free and land of the quick apolo, ESPN moved quickly to apologize: "Wednesday night on ESPNEWS, an anchor used an inappropriate word in asking a question about Jeremy Lin. ESPN apologizes for the incident, and is taking steps to avoid this in the future.”
Then last Saturday morning, the mobile website for ESPN ran a headline about the Knicks' loss to the New Orleans Hornets, writing: "Chink in the armor." Oops. Chink? Chinaman? Kike? Wop? Greaser? Guinea? Wetback? Frog? Kraut? Slant-eyes? What's America's and ESPN's obsession with offending Lin and anyone who might think using the word "chink" as a lame pun in that headline? The news about the chink comment was
soon on all the TV stations in Taiwan, with local commentators talking on talk shows all day about the word, since most Taiwanese in Taiwan had never heard that slur before, since it's a very American and English word.
ESPN -- which stands for ''English Speaking Poop Network'' -- was quick to pull down the headline 30 minutes after it appeared and then issued apolo No. 2: "We are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake."
Bad, bad, bad, bad. Said one commentator in NYC: "Oi. It's as if ESPN frat boy manning the terminals can't resist making a few immature jokes at the expense of a player whose last name has spawned countless bad puns and they think they can do better, maybe add a smirking joke in the copy. Let's hope whoever crafted that racist headline got a swift kick in the derriere, excuse my French, for degrading Lin, his fans and anyone of Asian-American descent."
So what does "a chink in the armor' mean as an idiom?
"An narrow opening and vulnerable area in one's armor that the
opponent will usually aim for. This term relies on "chink" in the
sense of "a crack or gap," a meaning dating from about 1400 A.D.and used
figuratively since the mid-1600s," says my dictionary, adding: ''A figurative term for a one's weakness, largest flaw or their
prevention of success."
Here's a sample sentence from a college frat party midterm exam paper: "Because of the chink in the armor of Sir Lancelot, his opponent was
able to break past his defense and inflict a dangerous flesh wound."
This Linsanity will go on. Be prepared for more bad puns, more racist insults, and more Asian bashing. It's now a ''free-for-all'', whatever that means!
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Local ''mother tongues'' in Taiwan must be preserved, says Taiwanese intellectual William JK Lo
Local ''mother tongues'' must be preserved
By William J.K. Lo [羅榮光]
In order to protect the languages of peoples and ethnic groups around the world, the UN has made February 21 a global ''International Mother Language Day''. Languages are a diversified and rich cultural asset belonging to all humanity.
Language was a precious gift that humanity bestowed on itself. It made it possible for people to communicate their emotions and thoughts. Different peoples and ethnic groups have their own unique languages, and parents teach their children their own language. The mother language thus becomes a precious cultural asset that future generations must protect and pass on. This also helps consolidate ethnic identity and belonging.
We should great attention to using mother languages more often in Taiwan. The alien regime Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, for example, -- and it's part of an alien regime just like the KMT is, because Christiantiy is not native to Taiwan and has no place here, other than as a borrowed alien regime that oppresses the Aborigines and others would prefer to follow the religions of the own ancestors, not some Middle Eastern cowboy called Joshua, er, Jesus -- currently has many congregations, and every Sunday they give alien regime sermons, reading from the alien regime and false Bible, singing, praying and preaching in more than a dozen different languages, such as Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), Hakka, Amis, Bunun, Atayal, Paiwan, Rukai, Truku, Tao, Tsou, Sediq, Puyuma, Saisiyat, Chinese, Japanese and English, all in an attempt to brainwash local Taiwanese people into accepting an alien god named Jesus. In addition, the Bible Thumpers Society of Taiwan currently publishes alien regime Bibles in 10 different local languages also to oppress the Aborigines and others. False and fake Bible societies around the world have now published Bibles in 2,508 languages.
It is worrying that the languages of Taiwan’s ethnic groups are gradually disappearing. In public places such as the MRT in Taipei, for example, it is becoming increasingly rare to hear people speak using their mother language, as more and more people use Chinese. Hakka people even used to say that they would rather sell off their inheritance than forget their mother language. About a dozen years ago, I attended a demonstration in Taipei with more than 1,000 Hakka people chanting “Give us back our mother language,” but today fewer and fewer people speak Hakka.
Since the various mother languages were handed down to us by our ancestors over the centuries, we Taiwanese must learn to respect the different languages. For example, many foreign and abused housemaids and other abused workers as well as foreign spouses speak Tagalog, Thai, Vietnamese and other languages. They also have their own unique songs, dances and plays that should all be admired and treated with respect, mutually shared and learned. This would make our culture richer and more diverse while at the same time testifying to the vast tolerance of Taiwanese.
To mark International Mother Language Day, the Li Kang-Khiok Taigi Cultural and Educational Foundation held a Hoklo and Hakka mother-language event at the Affiliated High School of National Taiwan Normal University last Sunday to promote the sustainability of all Taiwan’s different mother languages.
William J.K. Lo is an alien regime Christian who has renounced the mother religion of his own ancestors to follow a falser prophet from the ancient Middle East and is also president of the Taiwan United Nations Alliance.
]Edited by Yours Truly]
By William J.K. Lo [羅榮光]
In order to protect the languages of peoples and ethnic groups around the world, the UN has made February 21 a global ''International Mother Language Day''. Languages are a diversified and rich cultural asset belonging to all humanity.
Language was a precious gift that humanity bestowed on itself. It made it possible for people to communicate their emotions and thoughts. Different peoples and ethnic groups have their own unique languages, and parents teach their children their own language. The mother language thus becomes a precious cultural asset that future generations must protect and pass on. This also helps consolidate ethnic identity and belonging.
We should great attention to using mother languages more often in Taiwan. The alien regime Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, for example, -- and it's part of an alien regime just like the KMT is, because Christiantiy is not native to Taiwan and has no place here, other than as a borrowed alien regime that oppresses the Aborigines and others would prefer to follow the religions of the own ancestors, not some Middle Eastern cowboy called Joshua, er, Jesus -- currently has many congregations, and every Sunday they give alien regime sermons, reading from the alien regime and false Bible, singing, praying and preaching in more than a dozen different languages, such as Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), Hakka, Amis, Bunun, Atayal, Paiwan, Rukai, Truku, Tao, Tsou, Sediq, Puyuma, Saisiyat, Chinese, Japanese and English, all in an attempt to brainwash local Taiwanese people into accepting an alien god named Jesus. In addition, the Bible Thumpers Society of Taiwan currently publishes alien regime Bibles in 10 different local languages also to oppress the Aborigines and others. False and fake Bible societies around the world have now published Bibles in 2,508 languages.
It is worrying that the languages of Taiwan’s ethnic groups are gradually disappearing. In public places such as the MRT in Taipei, for example, it is becoming increasingly rare to hear people speak using their mother language, as more and more people use Chinese. Hakka people even used to say that they would rather sell off their inheritance than forget their mother language. About a dozen years ago, I attended a demonstration in Taipei with more than 1,000 Hakka people chanting “Give us back our mother language,” but today fewer and fewer people speak Hakka.
Since the various mother languages were handed down to us by our ancestors over the centuries, we Taiwanese must learn to respect the different languages. For example, many foreign and abused housemaids and other abused workers as well as foreign spouses speak Tagalog, Thai, Vietnamese and other languages. They also have their own unique songs, dances and plays that should all be admired and treated with respect, mutually shared and learned. This would make our culture richer and more diverse while at the same time testifying to the vast tolerance of Taiwanese.
To mark International Mother Language Day, the Li Kang-Khiok Taigi Cultural and Educational Foundation held a Hoklo and Hakka mother-language event at the Affiliated High School of National Taiwan Normal University last Sunday to promote the sustainability of all Taiwan’s different mother languages.
William J.K. Lo is an alien regime Christian who has renounced the mother religion of his own ancestors to follow a falser prophet from the ancient Middle East and is also president of the Taiwan United Nations Alliance.
]Edited by Yours Truly]
Monday, January 9, 2012
Dystopian climate novel has roots in Poland, too
ARTWORK credit : Deng Cheng-hong (c) 2012
http://polarcitymuseum.blogspot.com/
'Now a new genre of science fiction is coming to Poland and the rest
of Europe, and it's sometimes referred to as "cli-fi" -- climate
science fiction.
One of the practictioners of this new sci fi genre is American writer
Jim Laughter, 60, who has
peered into the future -- and he’s not laughing. In his new novel, the
retired grandfather of four envisions so-called ”polar cities” for future
survivors of devastating climate change disasters worldwide.
Does this have any connection to Poland? Well, in the distant future
-- some say the near future -- Poland and the rest of northern Europe
will see millions of climate refugees from southern Europe and Africa
trekking northward, and even Poland itself might be under threat
from the devastating impacts of ''climate chaos'' -- from rising sea
levels to scarcity of food, fuel and shelters.
Enter “Polar City Red,” Laughter’s 250-page cli-fi
novel that is set to debut in paperback and ebook
versions this year. The book is set in Alaska in the year 2080, but it
could just as well be Poland, too. Global warming is borderless,
and so are our fears.
Forget missions to Mars, and start thinking about mass
migrations of ''climate refugees'' north to Poland, Norway, Iceland.
(By the way, the
term "climate refugees" was coined by
Robin Bronen, a professor in Anchorage, Alaska.)
"Global warming is no laughing matter," says Laughter, a 20-year
veteran of the U.S. Air Force who was stationed
in Japan and the Philippines, among other places.
"You know, I met a man just the other day who told me, who insisted,
that global warming is just a myth,” Laughter, author of ten sci-fi
novels and a resident of Oklahoma, told this reporter. “He saw
a program on television that said it’s a scare tactic to direct
people’s attention away from truly serious issues such as the economy
and the state of international affairs. He’s right about one thing;
it’s a scary subject. And if projections are correct about the amount
of carbon dioxide polluting our atmosphere, we’d better be scared. We
may not be at the point of panic yet, but the day is coming when this
is world is going to turn its back on us and invite us to leave
forever.”
“So I’m putting my heart into this new book,” Laughter added. “It’s
for my four grandkids. I hope it helps to wake the world up, too!”
“Polar City Red” is a not book written by a scientist, ”since I am no
scientist,” Laughter is quick to add. “But I am approaching the story
as a family man concerned about the future of our planet. If my sci-fi
story can reach a small audience at first and later reach an even
greater readership worldwide in translation, I’ll be happy.”
Laughter says ”Polar City Red” is just a good old-fashioned yarn for
the average lay person, but adds: “I’m sure scientists many times
smarter than I am will read the book and say, ‘I could have said that
better.’ But I hope climate researchers will also enjoy the book,
without being too critical. Hollywood screenwriters might want to take
a peek, too. It’s the day after ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ but based on
global warming rather than global cooling. I think a visionary film
director could have a field day with this.”
Laughter says that as a fiction writer he is straddling the fence. “I
hope the message I’m trying to convey isn’t overshadowed by criticism
and skepticism from climate denialists and skeptics,” Laughter says.
“You never know when a scientist or activist studying global warming
might read something in the book and realize their life hasn’t been
wasted trying to warn humankind of our folly when we burn billions of
tons of fossil fuels every year and expend dangerous levels of carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere. Global warming is no laughing matter.”
Or so says Jim Laughter.
“I’m not smart enough to scientifically explain the intricacies of
global warming,” Laughter adds. “But neither am I stupid enough to
ignore the signs around me. I’ve driven through a few stop signs and
traffic lights in my life, only to be stopped by policemen alert to
the situation. The human race had better start paying attention to the
signs around us if we want to leave a habitable planet for generations
to come.”
Sci fi fans will likely be the first and most avid readers of "Polar City
Red" since it's set in a "Mad Max" kind of climate dystopia just
outside Fairbanks in the not so distant future.
Is it science? No, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to
understand that climate chaos is going to have a direct -- and
chilling -- impact on all of Europe, from Warsaw to Oslo.
But for now, Laughter's book is just an old-fashioned cli-fi yarn, so
there's nothing to be afraid of. Still, it's food for thought. If
nothing else, you can always tear the pages
out and line your bird cages with them.
---------------------------------------------------
http://polarcitymuseum.blogspot.com/
Science fiction in Poland has a long history and dates all the way
back to the late 18th Century. Perhaps the best known Polish sci fi
writer of all time is the great Stanisław Lem (1921-2006).
Lem's books
have been translated into over 40 languages worldwide and have sold
over 30 million copies. He is best known as the author of the 1961
sci-fi novel ''Solaris'.
Lem also wrote "His Master's Voice" (Głos
pana, 1968), and "Fiasco" (Fiasko, 1987). ''Solaris'' was made into a
film in 1972 by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and Steven
Soderbergh directed a Hollywood remake of the movie, starring George
Clooney.
'Now a new genre of science fiction is coming to Poland and the rest
of Europe, and it's sometimes referred to as "cli-fi" -- climate
science fiction.
One of the practictioners of this new sci fi genre is American writer
Jim Laughter, 60, who has
peered into the future -- and he’s not laughing. In his new novel, the
retired grandfather of four envisions so-called ”polar cities” for future
survivors of devastating climate change disasters worldwide.
Does this have any connection to Poland? Well, in the distant future
-- some say the near future -- Poland and the rest of northern Europe
will see millions of climate refugees from southern Europe and Africa
trekking northward, and even Poland itself might be under threat
from the devastating impacts of ''climate chaos'' -- from rising sea
levels to scarcity of food, fuel and shelters.
Enter “Polar City Red,” Laughter’s 250-page cli-fi
novel that is set to debut in paperback and ebook
versions this year. The book is set in Alaska in the year 2080, but it
could just as well be Poland, too. Global warming is borderless,
and so are our fears.
Forget missions to Mars, and start thinking about mass
migrations of ''climate refugees'' north to Poland, Norway, Iceland.
(By the way, the
term "climate refugees" was coined by
Robin Bronen, a professor in Anchorage, Alaska.)
"Global warming is no laughing matter," says Laughter, a 20-year
veteran of the U.S. Air Force who was stationed
in Japan and the Philippines, among other places.
"You know, I met a man just the other day who told me, who insisted,
that global warming is just a myth,” Laughter, author of ten sci-fi
novels and a resident of Oklahoma, told this reporter. “He saw
a program on television that said it’s a scare tactic to direct
people’s attention away from truly serious issues such as the economy
and the state of international affairs. He’s right about one thing;
it’s a scary subject. And if projections are correct about the amount
of carbon dioxide polluting our atmosphere, we’d better be scared. We
may not be at the point of panic yet, but the day is coming when this
is world is going to turn its back on us and invite us to leave
forever.”
“So I’m putting my heart into this new book,” Laughter added. “It’s
for my four grandkids. I hope it helps to wake the world up, too!”
“Polar City Red” is a not book written by a scientist, ”since I am no
scientist,” Laughter is quick to add. “But I am approaching the story
as a family man concerned about the future of our planet. If my sci-fi
story can reach a small audience at first and later reach an even
greater readership worldwide in translation, I’ll be happy.”
Laughter says ”Polar City Red” is just a good old-fashioned yarn for
the average lay person, but adds: “I’m sure scientists many times
smarter than I am will read the book and say, ‘I could have said that
better.’ But I hope climate researchers will also enjoy the book,
without being too critical. Hollywood screenwriters might want to take
a peek, too. It’s the day after ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ but based on
global warming rather than global cooling. I think a visionary film
director could have a field day with this.”
Laughter says that as a fiction writer he is straddling the fence. “I
hope the message I’m trying to convey isn’t overshadowed by criticism
and skepticism from climate denialists and skeptics,” Laughter says.
“You never know when a scientist or activist studying global warming
might read something in the book and realize their life hasn’t been
wasted trying to warn humankind of our folly when we burn billions of
tons of fossil fuels every year and expend dangerous levels of carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere. Global warming is no laughing matter.”
Or so says Jim Laughter.
“I’m not smart enough to scientifically explain the intricacies of
global warming,” Laughter adds. “But neither am I stupid enough to
ignore the signs around me. I’ve driven through a few stop signs and
traffic lights in my life, only to be stopped by policemen alert to
the situation. The human race had better start paying attention to the
signs around us if we want to leave a habitable planet for generations
to come.”
Sci fi fans will likely be the first and most avid readers of "Polar City
Red" since it's set in a "Mad Max" kind of climate dystopia just
outside Fairbanks in the not so distant future.
Is it science? No, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to
understand that climate chaos is going to have a direct -- and
chilling -- impact on all of Europe, from Warsaw to Oslo.
But for now, Laughter's book is just an old-fashioned cli-fi yarn, so
there's nothing to be afraid of. Still, it's food for thought. If
nothing else, you can always tear the pages
out and line your bird cages with them.
---------------------------------------------------
State of the Union -- A new book on the rocky marriage of Mr and Mrs Obama
David Remnick pings:
January 16, 2011
In “The West Wing,” employment at the White House was an invitation to a fizzy world of noble intent and screwball comedy. The spawn of William Powell and Myrna Loy aced their F.B.I. security clearances, did the world-altering work of civil seraphim, and strode endless hallways, cracking wise in pools of amber light. As it happens, to work at the White House is to wake each morning in darkness and in dread. It is not only the crises of global moment that shred the nerves. The constant tide of trivia cascading down the BlackBerry screen each morning, through Twitter and Politico, makes an aide’s first sip of coffee taste of acid reflux.
MORE HERE
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/01/16/120116crbo_books_remnick?currentPage=all
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/01/16/120116crbo_books_remnick#ixzz1j1FLB1jv
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/01/16/120116crbo_books_remnick?currentPage=all
January 16, 2011
“In public, they smiled and waved,” Jodi Kantor writes, “but how were the Obamas really reacting to the White House?”Keywords - “The Obamas” (Little, Brown); Jodi Kantor; (Pres.) Barack Obama; Michelle Obama; Marriages; First Ladies; First Couples
In “The West Wing,” employment at the White House was an invitation to a fizzy world of noble intent and screwball comedy. The spawn of William Powell and Myrna Loy aced their F.B.I. security clearances, did the world-altering work of civil seraphim, and strode endless hallways, cracking wise in pools of amber light. As it happens, to work at the White House is to wake each morning in darkness and in dread. It is not only the crises of global moment that shred the nerves. The constant tide of trivia cascading down the BlackBerry screen each morning, through Twitter and Politico, makes an aide’s first sip of coffee taste of acid reflux.
MORE HERE
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/01/16/120116crbo_books_remnick?currentPage=all
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/01/16/120116crbo_books_remnick#ixzz1j1FLB1jv
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/01/16/120116crbo_books_remnick?currentPage=all
Untangling Rebekah Brooks
.The MagazineFebruary 2012
0 E-Mail Untangling Rebekah Brooks
FIND OUT MORE HERE:
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/02/rebekah-brooks-201202
0 E-Mail Untangling Rebekah Brooks
Rebekah Brooks was running the News of the World at 31, and Rupert Murdoch’s entire British newspaper empire at 41. A virtual member of the Murdoch family, close to Prime Ministers Blair, Brown, and Cameron, she relished her power—until the phone-hacking scandal took her down. Talking to Brooks’s former colleagues and friends, Suzanna Andrews uncovers the woman wrapped in the enigma, the keys to her meteoric rise, and the latest object of her incandescent ambition.
FIND OUT MORE HERE:
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/02/rebekah-brooks-201202
Japan's Past Perfect
[From the January/February 2012 issue of National Geographic Traveler]
Ronatic traveller writer Don George writes:
We’re at Chiiori, the project of an gaijin author named Alex Kerr, who fell in love with this part of Japan when he was a student in Tokyo in the 1970s and bought this farmhouse as a way to preserve the traditions he treasured.
The Iya Valley is set deep in the mountainous interior of Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four principal islands, cradled between Kyushu to the west and the main island of Honshu, with the Inland Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south.
Kuniko’s hometown, Johen, is a tranquil place of about 9,000 people in the southwestern corner of Shikoku. Although it is a main island, Shikoku is what most Japanese consider tooi inaka, the deep countryside. Though there are a handful of famous sights—the 17th-century castles of Matsuyama and Kochi, Ritsurin Koen garden in Takamatsu, and the hot spring spa of Dogo Onsen in Matsuyama—and though three bridges now link the island to Honshu (the first opened in 1988), Shikoku remains a mystery to the average Japanese. It’s even more mysterious to foreigners, who rarely venture this far off the beaten path.
On my first visit here, I literally fell off the beaten path. Everything was going beautifully until Kuniko and I reached her family’s house, which was located on a lane that seemed narrower than our rental car, with a ditch on one side and a stream on the other. When I tried to turn the corner, a rear wheel slipped into the ditch. And that’s how I met my future parents-in-law, asking if they could help me lift my car from the trench. Kuniko’s mother, Obaachan, recalls this moment 32 years later, as the entire family gathers outside their home to bow me off on a sunny September day. “Don-san, stay away from the ditches!” she calls in Japanese as I pull away.
I’m bound for Cape Ashizuri, the island’s southernmost tip. Last night, over sushi, beers, and a shiny new Shikoku map, I had asked Kuniko’s parents and two brothers to tell me where to go to find the heart of Shikoku. Kuniko’s older brother, Nobuhisa, had nominated Cape Ashizuri, the same place he took us on my first visit. “Be sure to take this road,” he said, tracing a squiggle with his chopstick. “For me, that’s the best way to see what we call aoi kuni Shikoku: ‘blue country Shikoku.’ Blue sky, blue mountains, blue rice paddies, blue sea.” Blue rice paddies? He noted my quizzical look. “In old Japanese, aoi means both blue and green.”
A half hour out of Johen (which is now part of Ainan Town), I’m already immersed in classic aoi scenery: a deep blue sky over evergreen-cloaked mountains, sloping down to emerald rice paddies with a silver-glinting river ribboning through. There are hints of human presence: handmade scarecrows in straw hats placed among the paddies, wooden farmhouses darkened by age, and a diminutive Shinto shrine, with its stout torii gateway and sacred rope, set at the foot of one slope.
After a couple of hours driving through a thousand shades of green, I stop in a one-street hamlet of about two dozen wooden homes. The main street curves along the seafront, past a placid row of shops: vegetable market, hardware store, hair salon, bakery. Behind one house three men in wide-brimmed straw hats tend a fire of backyard vegetation, the smoke stinging the air. At the end of the street a bent old woman in a sunbonnet pushes a three-wheeled walker. She smiles and bows as I pass. Three kids pedal by on bikes. In the half-moon harbor, fishing boats gently rock. A thickly forested hillside rises steeply behind the houses, and gray cemetery obelisks zigzag in patches of cleared land up the slope. The summer air is still.
“Wah!” the grandmotherly woman behind the counter at the bakery says when I walk in. “A foreign guest!” She is about five feet tall and is dressed in the region’s traditional blue and white dyed kasuri pants and a floppy floral shirt. Her wrinkled, tanned face crinkles into a bright smile.
I ask if she grew up in this village. “Oh, yes, I was born here and have lived here all my life.” She counts on her fingers. “Seven decades.”
Has she ever thought about living anywhere else?
“Oh no!” she quickly responds. “Why would I want to live anywhere else?”
How about the young people, I ask, do they stay here, too? “Ah, well, the young people,” she sighs, “they don’t think there’s much to do here, so they all go to Nagoya or Kobe. They prefer the city. But I like it here; it’s peaceful and close to nature. For me, there’s no reason to leave.”
When I pass her some coins to pay for my canned ice coffee, she waves them away. “I’m honored to have a foreign guest,” she says. “Thank you for visiting Shikoku. Have a safe journey!”
Threading my way through fish-pungent villages, I eventually reach the tip of Cape Ashizuri and stand on the lookout point where Kuniko, Nobuhisa, and I stood 32 years before. I gaze at the gleaming white lighthouse, the craggy coast, the cedar-covered mountains sliding into the sea. This is a picture I carried in my head and heart all those years—pristine, peaceful, offering a wideness of sight and soul that you never find in urban Japan. I call Kuniko and describe the scene. “Yes,” she says, as if she’s known this all the time, “that’s why I was able to marry you. Shikoku opens up your mind and your heart like no other place in Japan can.”
That night I stay in a nearby inn with a sweeping view of rice fields, mountains, and one of the longest white-sand beaches in Japan—and an owner whose own mind and heart seem as expansive as the view. “Welcome to Kaiyu Inn!” Mitsu Ohkada booms in English when I walk into the open-to-the-breezes lobby. He started the inn after years working at an international hotel chain in Bali, he tells me. “I love the slow pace and the tranquillity here—and of course the nature. Do you know aoi kuni Shikoku?” I do.
The next day, I’m white-knuckling along one-lane roads through the green, steeply sloping mountains of the Iya Valley. Villages are carved into occasional clearings on the mountainsides, and I pass farmers hoeing and digging, with occasional bushels of barley standing on hardscrabble plots. It’s late afternoon when I reach Chiiori, the renovated farmhouse cum inn where Kuniko’s younger brother, Fumiyaki, had urged me to stay.
Chiiori is a vision straight out of a Japanese storybook: a long, low wooden farmhouse crowned by a shaggy roof of two-foot-thick thatch.
“Irasshaimase! Welcome!” calls Paul Cato, the American resident manager, as he slides open the inn’s wooden doors. The interior of the house is exquisitely empty, one open room about 40 feet long by 20 feet wide, all gleaming wooden floorboards, thick exposed wooden beams, rice paper lanterns, and rice paper screens. Stepping over the threshold is like stepping back in time.
“That’s actually true,” Cato says when I mention this feeling. “Chiiori is an actual 300-year-old farmhouse. Author Alex Kerr had fallen in love with traditional Japanese architecture and aesthetics, and his dream was to restore this place so that it resembled as closely as possible a typical Iya farmhouse of three centuries ago.
“It’s not just about the architecture; it’s the way of life, too. Look up,” Cato says. Instead of a ceiling, I can see all the way to the roof’s blackened rafters. “In the old days,” he explains, “tobacco was a primary crop. Because of the wet climate, the farmers would hang the leaves from the rafters to dry inside, over the smoking hearths. That’s why there’s no ceiling. They were ingenious in other ways, too.” He lifts a broad wooden floorboard to reveal a pile of stored potatoes. “Alex loved the farming customs and old-fashioned peace he found in Iya, and he wanted to preserve them. Volunteers have come from throughout Japan and around the world to live here, work the crops, and maintain the farmhouse, and local farmers teach the traditional techniques. So this truly is a piece of old Japan.”
One modern feature of Chiiori is excellent Wi-Fi, and I get an e-mail from Kuniko. “We’re following your route,” she writes. “How is Iya and Chiiori? Fumiyaki says it’s the most peaceful place on Shikoku.”
As dusk shrouds the mountains, Cato and I slice and dice radishes, onions, cucumbers, carrots, potatoes, and pumpkins from Chiiori’s garden for a rich stew that we eat around the charcoal-fired hearth. Then I snuggle into thick futons under 300-year-old wooden beams and 25-year-old thatch. I tap out a sleepy e-mail: “Please thank Fumiyaki for his great advice: Staying here is an immersion course in the relation between nature and man.”
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, I arrive at Okuiya Niju Kazurabashi, or “double vine bridge.” Except for a lone ticket taker, the site is absolutely deserted. I descend a hundred steps into a primeval scene of thick foliage and floating clumps of mist. Two “wedded” bridges appear spectrally—each a set of intertwining vines stretched across a rushing river. The higher and longer bridge is traditionally known as the male; the lower, shorter one the female. Fog rises from the river and obscures the surrounding hills.
Of all the sights in Iya Valley—the mountains and temples and hot springs—this is the one other place Fumiyaki told me I had to go. “The bridge was said to be built by the Heike clan in the 12th century, when they fled from Kyoto after losing a civil war with the Genji clan,” he told me. “The Heike settled deep in the mountains of Iya, and they built these vine bridges for protection, because they could easily destroy them if the Genji ever approached. Only two vine bridge sites remain. The other one is touristy, but you can get a sense of old Shikoku at this one.”
A sudden wind sways the vine bridge, slick with the day’s rain. Tentatively I set a sandaled foot on the first vine-entwined wooden plank, wishing I’d brought better footwear. I shift my weight, take a deep breath, and set my other foot on the second plank. Swoop!
My sandal slips, and suddenly I’m sprawled on my rump and my foot is wedged between wooden planks. I try to wiggle it out, and the vines claw and cling, lodging it deeper. The woods, the mist, the ghosts of the Heike warriors, all close in on me.
“The people of Iya still believe that gods live in the mountains,” Fumiyaki had said, and now I understand why. I can hear them laughing in the trees.
Finally I find a way to detach my foot from my sandal, scratch and scrape my foot through the planks, and extricate my sandal from the bridge. But I can’t leave—how could I face Kuniko’s family? With the vines dancing and the wind creaking the boughs, I carefully place my re-sandaled foot and clutch the vine-looped handrails with both hands. Focus, focus. Slowly I step from plank to plank, the bridge bouncing and creaking. After a heart-pounding ten minutes, I jump triumphantly onto the other side. I think of Fumiyaki and raise a silent prayer to the mountain gods.
IN THE MAIN HALL at the Zentsuji temple complex, incense spirals into the air and monks intone a solemn chant while a half dozen elderly visitors bow and pray; outside, another young monk assiduously sweeps the dirt ground with a broom made of twigs. At one end of the complex, Japanese tourists led by a flag-wielding guide admire a soaring five-story pagoda; nearby, a quartet of meticulously coiffed women ooh and aah before a stupendous camphor tree that looks to be older than the temple itself.
Zentsuji is the birthplace of the beloved Buddhist scholar and high priest Kobo Daishi, who built the temple in the early ninth century. This is the place Kuniko’s father, Ojiichan, had said I should see. “To understand Shikoku,” Ojiichan said, “you have to understand the pilgrimage, which follows in the footsteps of Kobo Daishi. There are 88 temples all around Shikoku in the circuit, and pilgrims—o-henro-san—walk from temple to temple to gain wisdom and purity. I remember when I was a little boy the pilgrims would approach our door—you could hear the ting-ting of the bells they carried—and my mother would tell me to bring them rice and oranges. That’s why we welcome strangers on Shikoku.”
A shop displaying books, beads, walking sticks, and other pilgrimage accoutrements entices me, and I lose all sense of time perusing a children’s picture book showing the life and legends of Kobo Daishi. When I emerge, pilgrims are everywhere, clad in identical conical bamboo hats and loose, immaculate white jackets and pants, all carrying straight, sturdy staffs. I approach one couple who look to be a father and daughter. Youthful energy radiates from the father’s time-lined face. When I ask them about the pilgrimage, the daughter reaches into a shoulder pouch and carefully lifts out a book with a cover of gold and red silk. “At every temple, the priest writes the name of the temple on a page and then stamps it with the temple’s stamp,” the father says. They turn the pages for me. “Every time I make the pilgrimage, I feel lighter. It refreshes my sense of the meaning of life. I feel like I can do anything after I’ve finished the journey,” he says.
“Of course,” the daughter says, “this is only our fourth circuit. That o-henro-san there”—and she points to a wizened man draped in colorful sashes and dressed all in black—“is doing the route for the 333rd time!”
As I watch the pilgrims pray and pose for pictures, I realize that they are a benedictory presence on Shikoku. In their fervent, plodding path, they remind us to slow down and keep a higher spiritual purpose in mind. And I realize too the deep truth of Ojiichan’s words, that the tradition of hospitality, kindness, and openness on the island must trace its roots to the pilgrim’s own openhearted quest.
I tour the island for two more days, stopping to feel the texture of old straw-and-clay farmhouses, idling in serene fishing villages, bowing to pilgrims I pass. At a hot spring spa, a half dozen middle-aged women befriend me and insist on paying for my dinner. When I’m lost at a coastal intersection, a truck driver goes a half hour out of his way to deliver me to the right highway. At a roadside snack stand, the proprietress asks me if I’m doing the pilgrimage and when I tell her no, that I’m looking for the heart of Shikoku, she exclaims, “Then you’re a pilgrim, too!” and presents me with a strawberry shaved ice.
On the fifth day, I arrive back at Johen just as dusk is falling. The family is waiting for me with a feast of fresh-from-the-harbor katsuo sashimi and grilled aji, and fresh-from-the-garden mushrooms, tomatoes, and cucumbers.
As we sit on tatami mats around a low table, Obaachan fastens me with her bright eyes. “Well,” she says, “did you find the heart of Shikoku?”
“I did,” I say, and they all look at me expectantly. “But it’s not one particular place. I found it in farmers’ fields and fishermen’s villages, and in the pilgrims who give a sense of the sacred to daily life. And I found it over and over in everyday people who greeted me with a wide spirit and heartfelt hospitality.”
For a second I’m not sure if anyone has understood my mangled Japanese. Then they all nod and smile.
Ojiichan ceremoniously pours beer for everyone and raises his glass. “Don-san, it’s good to have you home. Kanpai!”
We all drain our glasses, then Obaachan raises hers again. “And I’m glad you missed the ditch this time!”
Don George writes Trip Lit, Traveler’s monthly books column online. Photographer Macduff Everton first visited Japan while hitchhiking around the world at age 18.
Ronatic traveller writer Don George writes:
''I’m sitting on the polished wooden steps of a 300-year-old farmhouse in Japan’s Iya Valley, looking out on a succession of mountain folds densely covered in deep green cedars. Skeins of morning mist rise from the valley floor, hang in wispy balls in the air, and tangle in the surrounding slopes. No other houses are visible. The only sound is the drip of pre-dawn rain from nearby branches and from the farmhouse’s roof of thick thatch. The faint scent of charcoal from last night’s hearth rides on the air. Old romantic and rose-colored glasses me, I feel as if I’m in the hermit’s hut in a 17th-century ink-and-brush painting. This is how I see Japan: not the semi-police state with no real democracy for the masses, who cannot even vote for their national leaders, but my romantic view of Japan as ye old Nippon. Give me this luxury, neh?“Extraordinary, isn’t it?” says Paul Cato, the ''gaijin'' expat manager of this farmhouse, inn, and living-history classroom. “There are mornings when I wake up here and wonder what century I’m in.”
We’re at Chiiori, the project of an gaijin author named Alex Kerr, who fell in love with this part of Japan when he was a student in Tokyo in the 1970s and bought this farmhouse as a way to preserve the traditions he treasured.
The Iya Valley is set deep in the mountainous interior of Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four principal islands, cradled between Kyushu to the west and the main island of Honshu, with the Inland Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south.
I FELL IN LOVE WITH SHIKOKU in the 1970s too, on a visit with my then girlfriend, now wife, Kuniko, who brought me to her family home here from the university in Tokyo, where we were both living.On that trip I discovered a Japan I hadn’t known existed: A place of farms and fishing villages, mountainside shrines and seaside temples, rugged seacoasts and forested hills, time-honored traditions and country kindness. Thirty-two years later, I’ve come back with Kuniko to celebrate our 28th anniversary and to see if I can rediscover that special place. While Kuniko relishes time at home with her family, I’m on a solo sojourn tracing pilgrims’ trails and winding one-lane roads in search of this lost Japan.
Kuniko’s hometown, Johen, is a tranquil place of about 9,000 people in the southwestern corner of Shikoku. Although it is a main island, Shikoku is what most Japanese consider tooi inaka, the deep countryside. Though there are a handful of famous sights—the 17th-century castles of Matsuyama and Kochi, Ritsurin Koen garden in Takamatsu, and the hot spring spa of Dogo Onsen in Matsuyama—and though three bridges now link the island to Honshu (the first opened in 1988), Shikoku remains a mystery to the average Japanese. It’s even more mysterious to foreigners, who rarely venture this far off the beaten path.
On my first visit here, I literally fell off the beaten path. Everything was going beautifully until Kuniko and I reached her family’s house, which was located on a lane that seemed narrower than our rental car, with a ditch on one side and a stream on the other. When I tried to turn the corner, a rear wheel slipped into the ditch. And that’s how I met my future parents-in-law, asking if they could help me lift my car from the trench. Kuniko’s mother, Obaachan, recalls this moment 32 years later, as the entire family gathers outside their home to bow me off on a sunny September day. “Don-san, stay away from the ditches!” she calls in Japanese as I pull away.
I’m bound for Cape Ashizuri, the island’s southernmost tip. Last night, over sushi, beers, and a shiny new Shikoku map, I had asked Kuniko’s parents and two brothers to tell me where to go to find the heart of Shikoku. Kuniko’s older brother, Nobuhisa, had nominated Cape Ashizuri, the same place he took us on my first visit. “Be sure to take this road,” he said, tracing a squiggle with his chopstick. “For me, that’s the best way to see what we call aoi kuni Shikoku: ‘blue country Shikoku.’ Blue sky, blue mountains, blue rice paddies, blue sea.” Blue rice paddies? He noted my quizzical look. “In old Japanese, aoi means both blue and green.”
A half hour out of Johen (which is now part of Ainan Town), I’m already immersed in classic aoi scenery: a deep blue sky over evergreen-cloaked mountains, sloping down to emerald rice paddies with a silver-glinting river ribboning through. There are hints of human presence: handmade scarecrows in straw hats placed among the paddies, wooden farmhouses darkened by age, and a diminutive Shinto shrine, with its stout torii gateway and sacred rope, set at the foot of one slope.
After a couple of hours driving through a thousand shades of green, I stop in a one-street hamlet of about two dozen wooden homes. The main street curves along the seafront, past a placid row of shops: vegetable market, hardware store, hair salon, bakery. Behind one house three men in wide-brimmed straw hats tend a fire of backyard vegetation, the smoke stinging the air. At the end of the street a bent old woman in a sunbonnet pushes a three-wheeled walker. She smiles and bows as I pass. Three kids pedal by on bikes. In the half-moon harbor, fishing boats gently rock. A thickly forested hillside rises steeply behind the houses, and gray cemetery obelisks zigzag in patches of cleared land up the slope. The summer air is still.
“Wah!” the grandmotherly woman behind the counter at the bakery says when I walk in. “A foreign guest!” She is about five feet tall and is dressed in the region’s traditional blue and white dyed kasuri pants and a floppy floral shirt. Her wrinkled, tanned face crinkles into a bright smile.
I ask if she grew up in this village. “Oh, yes, I was born here and have lived here all my life.” She counts on her fingers. “Seven decades.”
Has she ever thought about living anywhere else?
“Oh no!” she quickly responds. “Why would I want to live anywhere else?”
How about the young people, I ask, do they stay here, too? “Ah, well, the young people,” she sighs, “they don’t think there’s much to do here, so they all go to Nagoya or Kobe. They prefer the city. But I like it here; it’s peaceful and close to nature. For me, there’s no reason to leave.”
When I pass her some coins to pay for my canned ice coffee, she waves them away. “I’m honored to have a foreign guest,” she says. “Thank you for visiting Shikoku. Have a safe journey!”
Threading my way through fish-pungent villages, I eventually reach the tip of Cape Ashizuri and stand on the lookout point where Kuniko, Nobuhisa, and I stood 32 years before. I gaze at the gleaming white lighthouse, the craggy coast, the cedar-covered mountains sliding into the sea. This is a picture I carried in my head and heart all those years—pristine, peaceful, offering a wideness of sight and soul that you never find in urban Japan. I call Kuniko and describe the scene. “Yes,” she says, as if she’s known this all the time, “that’s why I was able to marry you. Shikoku opens up your mind and your heart like no other place in Japan can.”
That night I stay in a nearby inn with a sweeping view of rice fields, mountains, and one of the longest white-sand beaches in Japan—and an owner whose own mind and heart seem as expansive as the view. “Welcome to Kaiyu Inn!” Mitsu Ohkada booms in English when I walk into the open-to-the-breezes lobby. He started the inn after years working at an international hotel chain in Bali, he tells me. “I love the slow pace and the tranquillity here—and of course the nature. Do you know aoi kuni Shikoku?” I do.
The next day, I’m white-knuckling along one-lane roads through the green, steeply sloping mountains of the Iya Valley. Villages are carved into occasional clearings on the mountainsides, and I pass farmers hoeing and digging, with occasional bushels of barley standing on hardscrabble plots. It’s late afternoon when I reach Chiiori, the renovated farmhouse cum inn where Kuniko’s younger brother, Fumiyaki, had urged me to stay.
Chiiori is a vision straight out of a Japanese storybook: a long, low wooden farmhouse crowned by a shaggy roof of two-foot-thick thatch.
“Irasshaimase! Welcome!” calls Paul Cato, the American resident manager, as he slides open the inn’s wooden doors. The interior of the house is exquisitely empty, one open room about 40 feet long by 20 feet wide, all gleaming wooden floorboards, thick exposed wooden beams, rice paper lanterns, and rice paper screens. Stepping over the threshold is like stepping back in time.
“That’s actually true,” Cato says when I mention this feeling. “Chiiori is an actual 300-year-old farmhouse. Author Alex Kerr had fallen in love with traditional Japanese architecture and aesthetics, and his dream was to restore this place so that it resembled as closely as possible a typical Iya farmhouse of three centuries ago.
“It’s not just about the architecture; it’s the way of life, too. Look up,” Cato says. Instead of a ceiling, I can see all the way to the roof’s blackened rafters. “In the old days,” he explains, “tobacco was a primary crop. Because of the wet climate, the farmers would hang the leaves from the rafters to dry inside, over the smoking hearths. That’s why there’s no ceiling. They were ingenious in other ways, too.” He lifts a broad wooden floorboard to reveal a pile of stored potatoes. “Alex loved the farming customs and old-fashioned peace he found in Iya, and he wanted to preserve them. Volunteers have come from throughout Japan and around the world to live here, work the crops, and maintain the farmhouse, and local farmers teach the traditional techniques. So this truly is a piece of old Japan.”
One modern feature of Chiiori is excellent Wi-Fi, and I get an e-mail from Kuniko. “We’re following your route,” she writes. “How is Iya and Chiiori? Fumiyaki says it’s the most peaceful place on Shikoku.”
As dusk shrouds the mountains, Cato and I slice and dice radishes, onions, cucumbers, carrots, potatoes, and pumpkins from Chiiori’s garden for a rich stew that we eat around the charcoal-fired hearth. Then I snuggle into thick futons under 300-year-old wooden beams and 25-year-old thatch. I tap out a sleepy e-mail: “Please thank Fumiyaki for his great advice: Staying here is an immersion course in the relation between nature and man.”
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, I arrive at Okuiya Niju Kazurabashi, or “double vine bridge.” Except for a lone ticket taker, the site is absolutely deserted. I descend a hundred steps into a primeval scene of thick foliage and floating clumps of mist. Two “wedded” bridges appear spectrally—each a set of intertwining vines stretched across a rushing river. The higher and longer bridge is traditionally known as the male; the lower, shorter one the female. Fog rises from the river and obscures the surrounding hills.
Of all the sights in Iya Valley—the mountains and temples and hot springs—this is the one other place Fumiyaki told me I had to go. “The bridge was said to be built by the Heike clan in the 12th century, when they fled from Kyoto after losing a civil war with the Genji clan,” he told me. “The Heike settled deep in the mountains of Iya, and they built these vine bridges for protection, because they could easily destroy them if the Genji ever approached. Only two vine bridge sites remain. The other one is touristy, but you can get a sense of old Shikoku at this one.”
A sudden wind sways the vine bridge, slick with the day’s rain. Tentatively I set a sandaled foot on the first vine-entwined wooden plank, wishing I’d brought better footwear. I shift my weight, take a deep breath, and set my other foot on the second plank. Swoop!
My sandal slips, and suddenly I’m sprawled on my rump and my foot is wedged between wooden planks. I try to wiggle it out, and the vines claw and cling, lodging it deeper. The woods, the mist, the ghosts of the Heike warriors, all close in on me.
“The people of Iya still believe that gods live in the mountains,” Fumiyaki had said, and now I understand why. I can hear them laughing in the trees.
Finally I find a way to detach my foot from my sandal, scratch and scrape my foot through the planks, and extricate my sandal from the bridge. But I can’t leave—how could I face Kuniko’s family? With the vines dancing and the wind creaking the boughs, I carefully place my re-sandaled foot and clutch the vine-looped handrails with both hands. Focus, focus. Slowly I step from plank to plank, the bridge bouncing and creaking. After a heart-pounding ten minutes, I jump triumphantly onto the other side. I think of Fumiyaki and raise a silent prayer to the mountain gods.
IN THE MAIN HALL at the Zentsuji temple complex, incense spirals into the air and monks intone a solemn chant while a half dozen elderly visitors bow and pray; outside, another young monk assiduously sweeps the dirt ground with a broom made of twigs. At one end of the complex, Japanese tourists led by a flag-wielding guide admire a soaring five-story pagoda; nearby, a quartet of meticulously coiffed women ooh and aah before a stupendous camphor tree that looks to be older than the temple itself.
Zentsuji is the birthplace of the beloved Buddhist scholar and high priest Kobo Daishi, who built the temple in the early ninth century. This is the place Kuniko’s father, Ojiichan, had said I should see. “To understand Shikoku,” Ojiichan said, “you have to understand the pilgrimage, which follows in the footsteps of Kobo Daishi. There are 88 temples all around Shikoku in the circuit, and pilgrims—o-henro-san—walk from temple to temple to gain wisdom and purity. I remember when I was a little boy the pilgrims would approach our door—you could hear the ting-ting of the bells they carried—and my mother would tell me to bring them rice and oranges. That’s why we welcome strangers on Shikoku.”
A shop displaying books, beads, walking sticks, and other pilgrimage accoutrements entices me, and I lose all sense of time perusing a children’s picture book showing the life and legends of Kobo Daishi. When I emerge, pilgrims are everywhere, clad in identical conical bamboo hats and loose, immaculate white jackets and pants, all carrying straight, sturdy staffs. I approach one couple who look to be a father and daughter. Youthful energy radiates from the father’s time-lined face. When I ask them about the pilgrimage, the daughter reaches into a shoulder pouch and carefully lifts out a book with a cover of gold and red silk. “At every temple, the priest writes the name of the temple on a page and then stamps it with the temple’s stamp,” the father says. They turn the pages for me. “Every time I make the pilgrimage, I feel lighter. It refreshes my sense of the meaning of life. I feel like I can do anything after I’ve finished the journey,” he says.
“Of course,” the daughter says, “this is only our fourth circuit. That o-henro-san there”—and she points to a wizened man draped in colorful sashes and dressed all in black—“is doing the route for the 333rd time!”
As I watch the pilgrims pray and pose for pictures, I realize that they are a benedictory presence on Shikoku. In their fervent, plodding path, they remind us to slow down and keep a higher spiritual purpose in mind. And I realize too the deep truth of Ojiichan’s words, that the tradition of hospitality, kindness, and openness on the island must trace its roots to the pilgrim’s own openhearted quest.
I tour the island for two more days, stopping to feel the texture of old straw-and-clay farmhouses, idling in serene fishing villages, bowing to pilgrims I pass. At a hot spring spa, a half dozen middle-aged women befriend me and insist on paying for my dinner. When I’m lost at a coastal intersection, a truck driver goes a half hour out of his way to deliver me to the right highway. At a roadside snack stand, the proprietress asks me if I’m doing the pilgrimage and when I tell her no, that I’m looking for the heart of Shikoku, she exclaims, “Then you’re a pilgrim, too!” and presents me with a strawberry shaved ice.
On the fifth day, I arrive back at Johen just as dusk is falling. The family is waiting for me with a feast of fresh-from-the-harbor katsuo sashimi and grilled aji, and fresh-from-the-garden mushrooms, tomatoes, and cucumbers.
As we sit on tatami mats around a low table, Obaachan fastens me with her bright eyes. “Well,” she says, “did you find the heart of Shikoku?”
“I did,” I say, and they all look at me expectantly. “But it’s not one particular place. I found it in farmers’ fields and fishermen’s villages, and in the pilgrims who give a sense of the sacred to daily life. And I found it over and over in everyday people who greeted me with a wide spirit and heartfelt hospitality.”
For a second I’m not sure if anyone has understood my mangled Japanese. Then they all nod and smile.
Ojiichan ceremoniously pours beer for everyone and raises his glass. “Don-san, it’s good to have you home. Kanpai!”
We all drain our glasses, then Obaachan raises hers again. “And I’m glad you missed the ditch this time!”
Don George writes Trip Lit, Traveler’s monthly books column online. Photographer Macduff Everton first visited Japan while hitchhiking around the world at age 18.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)