Wammy is a Japanese toy recently on the market that consists of pliable pieces of plastic that can be connected to other pieces to make virtually anything.  Without having tried the toy myself, I bought a box of them for my five year old sister Paige, and sent them to her for Christmas.  They were [...]

A college friend of mine, Jeanine Dargis, is starting up a hostel in Northampton, Massachusetts, near my alma mater (sort of) of Hampshire College.  I was actually rather surprised that there wasn’t already a hostel in that town, considering the sort of nice little place that it is. In order for the project to move [...]

Culture is such a weird thing.  It defines nearly everything we do.  The time we wake up in the morning.  The side of the road we drive on.  The size of cups at McDonalds.  Whether of not we have to capitalize mCdonalds.  The types of cellphones we own.  The size of our car tires.  The [...]

Well, not that ridiculous, but at one point I felt such a feeling.  Here’s not what I did, but how I moved.  You judge. Friday. Saroma to Mombetsu by car, 1 hour. Saturday. Mombetsu to Sapporo by car. 5 hours. Sunday and Monday. Sapporo to Tokyo via Tomakomai and Oarai by ferry and bus. 27 [...]

I always try too hard to make clever post titles, so I didn’t bother this time.  I also have an increasing tendency to write very long, deep posts every month or two rather than writing more frequent posts every few days.  It’s frustrating to not write for so long, but it’s also frustrating to write [...]

I need to write a lot of things spanning from December through the winter to March.  I’ve worked myself into this idea that I can’t write unless I have an unlimited amount of free time to write into, that somehow I can’t write a blog post over a few one-hour sessions on weeknights.  I treasure [...]