Circles of Women
It was Thursday, late afternoon. My 3-year old son, Jack, and 13-year old daughter, Ruby, and I were walking to our car. We were going to the supermarket to get […]
It was Thursday, late afternoon. My 3-year old son, Jack, and 13-year old daughter, Ruby, and I were walking to our car. We were going to the supermarket to get […]
“There’s a reason it’s called the Game of LIFE. You lose a little bit each time you play,” my partner quipped after he pretend-grudgingly agreed to play this Milton Bradley […]
The private all-girls Catholic school that I went to in the Philippines aspired to form “self-actualized women of faith and service.” The particulars of the school’s lofty vision and mission […]
My 3-year old son loves trains. Our floor is often littered with black plastic train tracks, small figurines of Thomas the train and his friends, and miniature train models from […]
Ordinarily, we would have stayed put on a national holiday. Tourist spots and any place remotely interesting can be massively crowded, and roads unpredictably congested. But for this year’s Golden […]
Parents were milling about in the hallway outside the classrooms. Suddenly, H’s grandmother approached me. She held a small envelope, the sort that Japanese usually use to put money to […]
For three years, I taught a once-a-week 50-minute English class for Japanese elementary grade students. One of the first things I said to the students and their parents was, “You […]
One weekday, my 9 year old son came home 20 minutes later than he usually did. He dumped his school things on the kitchen floor, and said angrily, “They didn’t […]
My fourth grade son was going on a field trip. Aside from a bento, the students were allowed to bring about ¥200 (about $2) worth of “snacks,” really, code word […]
The Philippine national hero Jose Rizal was said to be proficient in 22 languages, including Japanese. In 1888, he stayed in Japan for six weeks (from February 28 to April […]