Noritake. It’s a word from my childhood, a word my mom would say as she talked about the china she wanted. I didn’t buy any, but there was the word. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see it, to recognize it here in the pottery region of Japan. It’s only one of many company names [...]
I could live in Sasebo. It has trees, water, and rolling hills. The land is lush — the kind of place where if you set something down, you might not be able to find it under all the new growth a few days later. It’s the home of Jason Rome, the boy who made this [...]
It feels too raw, too soon to write. It’s probably just as well that we couldn’t get online for a few days. Years of teaching this story of what people can do to each other didn’t prepare me for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Established in August 1955 to remember the victims of the bombing [...]
Our first Japan school visit! We were picked up by our host Billie Dysinger at the train station and hauled immediately to the “Chicken Shack” where two long tables of school staff and their families surprised us with the full-meal-deal dinner Japanese style. We sat in the partially open-air restaurant on pillows, cooked our own [...]
“I am comfortable with my heart exhilarated.”
We went on a word search today. T-shirt words. You’ll see a slew of them on Kaj’s blog, but this exhilarated quote suited my wound-up, wired and tired son to a T.
Naritasan Shinshoji Temple, with numerous halls, ponds, and fountains throughout its statued grounds of deep forests and stair-cased [...]
How far would you go to celebrate a book? How far would you go to make sure it’s noticed? Would you wear a purple wig with orange horns at an Illinois Builders’ Show? This coming week I’ll be wearing that same wig when I read Monsters on Machines in schools in Japan. I’ll keep you [...]
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