Series: Christmas Letter

I hope this letter finds you well.

It is hard to believe, but this past September marked three years since I transferred to Tokyo.  I am entering my seventh year with my current employer, meaning that I have now worked in the Tokyo office longer than I did in New York.

How time flies.

Life is interesting in that

As I look back on the past year, which flew by even faster than usual, the biggest news for me was the retirement of The Honorable Peter E. Doyne, the Assignment Judge of the Bergen Vicinage of the Superior Court of New Jersey.

Judge Doyne was my first boss and mentor.  I became his law clerk

If I were to pick one phrase to describe the past year, it would be “The Year of Changes.”

On the professional front, I left Shearman & Sterling in May after seven and a half years at the firm in order to join Amazon in Japan. The jump from being an experienced lawyer at a

This past year, I thought about “time” quite a bit.

In June and September, two of my college roommates got married, and their wedding ceremonies became an occasion for the four roommates to get together for the first time in years. As we bantered much in the same way as we had in college, I

Perhaps because I spent most of 2017 thinking about time and how there is never enough of it, I dedicated 2018 to making the most of my limited time seeking to accomplish something new and concrete outside of my day job.

With the holiday season fast approaching, I hope you are in good spirits.

This year, I’d like to talk a bit about shogi, the Japanese variation of chess.  You may be thinking “but you do that every year,” but this year I hope to give some context to my annual report on how

I hope this letter finds you safe.

My life motto is “Things happen, life happens,” but even I couldn’t have imagined living through a pandemic.

It’s times like these that make you contemplate life.

Below is the letter that I enclosed in this year’s Christmas cards.

With the holiday season fast approaching, I hope this letter finds you well.

It’s quite unlike me, but this year I’d like to talk a bit about my work.

My current job involves

With the holiday season fast approaching, I hope you are in good spirits.

This spring, I was promoted at work.  I must confess, it took a bit longer than I expected.

No doubt my general carefree attitude contributed to the delay.  For the longest time, the most I wanted

I hope this letter find you well.

This past spring, my maternal grandfather died at the age of 103.  I thought about writing about him and his incredible life, but I have great difficulty dealing and thinking about death.  Because of that, instead of writing about my thoughts on my