Clean mess or Dusty order: Incompatible or complementary?

I’m not sure whether my husband and I should be called incompatible or complementary, at least with respect to our housecleaning styles.  If we ever get divorced (having survived the last 30 years together) it will likely be due to these irreconcilable differences: he is happy with clean mess, whereas I prefer dusty order. Three…

Library – Troy, Michigan

Originally posted on FiftyFourandAHalf:
You guys read my blog and often rail with me against the stupidity we are seeing in our political discussions.  And it does my heart good. Tonight, I’m going to show you how some folks in Troy, Michigan, fought the Tea Party with inspiring brilliance, reverse psychology and humor. You folks…

Navigating from Kyoto to Tokyo

One always collects too much stuff at a conference – mainly heavy paper stuff.  On the morning of departure from Kyoto we had to sort through it all and make hard decisions. I brought my wheeled suitcase on this trip so I could put the heavy stuff in it, and carry light things in a…

Culture in Kyoto

This evening we were given a cultural show with a crew of presumably highly trained, expensive and refined geishas, for which Kyoto is famous. Maybe because we weren’t well fed beforehand, but we’re supplied with sake and such, I found myself nodding off a little. The charms of the geishas are, well, subtle – compared…

Eating in English – in Japan

There might be just one thing worse than not knowing what you are eating, and that would be KNOWING. Look at the second column under ‘Innards’! I’ll list the items below the picture since the photo isn’t too clear. I really wonder about the other brands of beef if this one is a “major beef…

Eating in Japanese

Our first morning in Tokyo we headed out toward the Yasukuni military shrine and happened upon the Sunday antique market. There was everything from World War 2 helmets and memorabilia to old photo albums, kimonos and junk jewelry. Maybe there were real jewels too, but how would I know? As we exited from the East…

Electronics for the masses

“Electric City” is a district in Tokyo where there are hundreds of electronics stores – everything from big department stores selling all the TVs, etc, you could want, to hole-in-the-wall places that stack oscilloscopes and cables and spy cameras and ham radio parts and transistors, etc. At least I was able to get wifi on…