After making three one-month trips to Japan during an 18-month period in 1989-1991, I moved there in early 1991 to live for an indeterminate period, at the outset expected to be up to one year. This stretched to eight and a half years, including marriage and commencing a family, before we all made Australia our permanent home from early 2000. A number of trips back have taken place since. This document commenced life as a series of one-off articles written during this residency, each article arising either from an everyday occurrence, a conversation, a news item, or a newspaper article. … [Read more...]