It was the worst day of my seven-year-old life. On the first day of class in Grade One in Japan, I couldn’t find the toilet. Just back...

Pavement autumn leaves Soft colors fallen angels Beauty marks in time

A reminder from carers who looked after us on #WorldKindnessDay: You is kind You is smart You is important Spoken by Aibileen to a child...

The First World War is hard to conjure up until the commemorations on French Armistice Day and British Remembrance Day roll around on...

Fleeting crimson branch Or staying evergreen tree Color, time, beauty

“Remember, remember the fifth of November of gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be...

Teach me everything Be just as you are she said Happy Birthday Mom

We had one streetlight on the dirt path back home in the northern alpine foothill town of Karuizawa Japan. An older kid, BearHunter...

The Capeless Hero spends far too much time in the hospital, worrying about whether her patient would be better off with or without his...

A couple of months ago my next-door neighbor, Milly, died. A descendant of the original builders of the five coal-cellar houses on our...

With the worldwide Whatsapp outage, I spent a moment of the evening wondering how I ever existed without the digital messenger. But a...

The first time I met my husband, he asked me how old I was. Apart from my disillusionment regarding Frenchman and charming pickup lines,...

Autumn is my favorite season. The air is crisp and ready for transition. In this mid-September week, the sun casts its light in exactly...

A couple of weeks back, I visited The Mayflower Pub in the Rotherhithe district of London where the Mayflower apparently docked before it...

Both my grandmothers wore kimonos every day until they died. When my maternal grandmother visited us in Singapore, she came wearing her...

Eighteen months or so into the pandemic, I’ve come to pay more attention to the air I breathe, to the roof over my head, and of course,...

For my husband’s post-lockdown birthday, the family sprang across town to see one of the two Van Gogh digital exhibitions in London this...

What do Nikon cameras, Pablo Picasso and perfumes have in common? Even in these days of Instagram and social media, photos for me still...

It’s Obon Season in Japan, a time to return to our hometowns and pay respect to our ancestors. In our summer haunt of Karuizawa in the...

Every year on the 6th of August the people of Hiroshima memorialize the victims of the atomic bomb that detonated above them with a...