I really do not like moving. It amazes me to see how much junk me and my wife (mostly my wife) can collect in a such a short time. Hopefully, this will be our last move for a while. Although, I guess you never end up living in the first house you buy.

I just finished closing on my first house. The whole process was somewhat surreal. It is amazing how easy and quickly it is to sign a few documents and have hundreds of thousands of dollars change hands and then be stuck for 30 years.

I have recently come to the conclusion that I have become old. My body is making more strange noises, my joints tend to crackle when I walk and I am cold most of the time. At this rate I should be ready for retirement in a couple of months.

I started my Masters in August of 2003 after taking a year off from school. During that year I looked for a job and traveled around Europe. While I had fun traveling, I did not have fun looking for a job and did not have much luck either. So, when I got the call [...]

Sometimes after starting something new we long for what is old. The old might not have been better and could even been a little worse, but we still seem to have some desire to return to some part of it. I think this is probably, because new things cause discomfort and the old seem like [...]

Every year my lab in Japan would have a gyouza party and probably because of that I came to like gyouza very much. While shopping at the local Asian grocery me and my wife found some gyouza skins and decided to try to make our own. To my amazement, they turned out pretty good.

Here is a video showing some of the Awa Odori festival in Tokushima. It is their biggest festival each year and brings in people from all over Japan.

This was the top children’s song at the time I left Japan.