I was asked to put together and lead a two-week walking tour in Japan in October 2025. I have never walked so much in Japan.

Too many tourists? Is Japan a victim of its own success? Tread lightly, dear reader.

A memorable evening in Kyoto with my daughter Nina

A spring bicycle tour with Albrecht and Sylvia yields a moment of beauty that transcends time and place

A visit to friends ends in a horrible moment of impact. Cash, cookies, and the passage of 36 years have done little to ease a painful memory.

A young man, an older woman, forbidden love. Maybe it was bound to happen.

English lessons lead to forbidden love between two lonely, bored people.

Middlebury, Vermont, summer of 1978: the beginning of my Japanese language journey. It’s been a rough road.

Two high school boys discover that biomedical research is not to be their path.

A tiny museum on a Kyoto side street opens a window into the world of the kaleidoscope

An American potter in Japan, the warmth of the kiln on a chilly night.

Sometimes it’s the most untranslatable expression that opens a door to understanding of another culture.

There are wonders at our feet. Felicia found them everywhere in the streets of towns and cities of Japan.

Mono no aware: This sense of gentle sadness at the passing of…things…is hard to pin down: life is full of sadness, but what kinds of things are we talking about?

The letter is neatly folded in its envelope where I had taped it into the pages of my journal 40 years ago. But the tape had long since dried out and the letter sits loosely between the pages.

I speak two languages: English and Japanese. It is hard to imagine two languages that could be more different from each other.

It’s late summer and we’re at the Lady Killigrew Café at the Book Mill, a used book store in Montague, Massachusetts. The Saw Mill River is full and flowing fast beside the old mill building. There was once a dam and mill race here, but those were dismantled and removed long ago. Only rapids remain, and the air is filled with the sound of rushing water.