Today was a relaxing stay-near-home kinda day for the most part. I sure wish I had written down what I ate every day but unfortunately I didn't. Mrs. Tsugawa always had breakfast at the ready whenever I came down in the morning which was usually between 7:30 and 8:30 AM. Breakfast always consisted of a plate of sliced fruit: apple, banana, kiwi, persimmon; a container of yogurt; and then either soup or salad. Imagine my surprise when one morning a bowl of h...

Today at breakfast Tsu asked me if I wanted to go to work with him today.  Sure!  Tsu attends car auctions and buys used vehicles and then fixes them in his shop and then resells them.  We drive for what seems like forever:  first about 30 minutes to his shop so he can pick up a pass that I need to wear for entrance to the auction; then we drive about another 45 minutes or more to the car auction.  The ride seems to be taking us down many a country road. ...

NB: You'll have to scroll down through my blog posts to find my post of day #1 in Japan and subsequent days in Japan as the site is posting them chronologically by the day I am writing about, in this case, Monday, January 12, 2014. Also, I am in Tokyo but this site is insisting I'm elsewhere! My clock goes off at 6:00 AM because Mamoru and Yoko are picking me up at 7:15 AM. They are taking me on a tour of Tokyo today. Boy am I ever lucky! We catch the trai...

My last day in Thailand was a "fly by the seat of my pants" kind of of day in that I had no plan except catching a cab to the airport in the late evening for my midnight flight to Tokyo. I slept in until 8:00 which was great, ate my usual complimentary breakfast at the guest house, and then spent the next hour in my room sorting and weighing my two pieces of luggage. It was 11:30 by the time I checked out of my hotel. They kindly stored my luggage in a locked ro...

A red-eye flight delivers me to Tokyo's Narita airport at 8:00 AM on Saturday, January 11, 2014. I managed 3-4 hours sleep during the six hour flight, waking up about 3 minutes before I would've missed seeing Mt. Fuji. As luck would have it, I glanced out the window and there was Mt. Fujisan in all her glory, rising high above the clouds so I could see her snow-laden cap off in the distance. I snap a bunch of photos and am in awe that I saw it because it's such a...