When I think about our friendship, I obviously start with our shared high school experience.
Ah, those memories from teenage years. There's no end to the stories of how terribly we used to behave, most especially to teachers. Yeah we were terribly juvenile, but the stuff we used to do back then were pretty witty,
Joe Michael Sasanuma, who earlier today died at the eternal age of 18, never had a moment in which he didn't enjoy life.
He lived by the words "What's the point of living if you can't feel alive?", a line fittingly taken from the James Bond movie "The World is Not Enough". Of the many things
As I attended your wedding celebration last week, so many thoughts came rushing through my head.
I thought about our friendship and how it is a reminder that friendships take many forms. You and I attended high school together, yet it was our geographic proximity during graduate school and the discovery then that we
Japanese and American people are truly remarkable people, although they amaze in entirely different ways.
The Japanese excel in order and discipline.
My favorite example to illustrate this is the shugaku ryokou, which is like a field trip for an entire grade over a couple nights at some exotic location like the historical city of Kyoto or Tokyo
Despite attending a prestigious university called Boston College, there are certain things that you are not entitled to.
First, you’re not entitled to any particular grade. Certainly not an A or a B, or even a C+.
Grades measure your knowledge and abilities, however imperfectly. If you exhibit superior capabilities, you get high marks. If you exhibit deficiencies,
As my friends can probably tell from my desperate pleas to read new posts every other Monday on Facebook, this blog does not get a lot of readers. I concede that the daily readership averages below one, and recently, the hits often don't reach double digits even on the Mondays that I put up a
In the winter of 2005, Michael Sessions decided to run for the mayor of his hometown.
The city of Hillsdale, located in the Southern part of the state of Michigan with a population of 8,200 and known for being the home of Hillsdale College, had been hit hard by the downturn of the automobile industry
I don't have a lot of regrets in my life. If forced to name them, I have a list of three to choose from, but people laughed at me the one time I talked about how I forever regret choosing to study for my constitutional law exam instead of attending my very first Brad Paisley concert,
It's unusual enough to recall a dream you had the night prior, but it's truly rare to have a dream with more or less the same story which I always recall because it's literally dé ja vu.
It goes something like this. It is the last week of classes and I am panicking because it dawns
For the longest time, I had no interest in reading.
I swear it started in high school, when novels like "The Grapes of Wrath," "Walden Pond" and "The Old Man and the Sea" sent me into temporary comas. I think my experience proves that just because a book is a "classic" doesn't mean kids in
The screenwriters seriously misjudged the audience for the newest Spiderman reboot, "The Amazing Spiderman" (2012). That is the only explanation I have for a film that has a script at a teenage chick flick level.
When I was 6-7 years old, my family would frequently go swimming at a local pool. I would swim for nearly a kilometer (for Americans, that's 0.6 miles) a day nearly everyday. Even after I went to the United States, I kept up with swimming by taking hourly swimming lessons every week. There I would
There's Linsanity sweeping across Limerica. Even Forbes magazine has gotten into the Linsanity by posting 10 lessons we can all learn from Jeremy's Linspiration. I read the list and realized why, although also tall and Asia, I'm no Jeremy Lin:
1. Believe in yourself when no one else does.
Because words like "vanity" and "narcissism" have been used
I am starting my new life in Tokyo, where new challenges await. I'm really excited, but the move still feels quite surreal. I don't think reality has quite sunk in.
Twenty-one years, 3 months and 10 days passed between my residency in Japan. That's a long time. I haven't felt nostalgic yet, but I've started to
I grew up in a quintessential, middle class New Jersey suburb. My parents, who went to college in America, were not typical Japanese expatriates. They cared little for socializing with Japanese people or Japanese pop culture and thus, I grew up with very little Japanese around me. Except for insisting that I attend Japanese school
Last week, I learned of a ridiculous fact that Justin Bieber earned $50 million this year. Besides making me think I definitely made a wrong career choice, it got me thinking about what I would do if I had $50 million...
I'll go to Monaco on a $1 million cruise trip and put $2 million on
Blaine Larsen's “In My High School” is one of my favorite songs. It’s a soothing melody that reflects on what life and people were like in high school.
I wish I can say that the song brings back memories, but the song says nothing about juvenile delinquents who knew of no etiquette, decency or common sense
Some friends you grew up with. These friends know the you before you matured, became educated and got a job. They are the people you may not become friends with if you met them now because you have grown to have different interests and walk in different circles, but the childhood innocence
A couple months ago, I defended lawyers. To show that I can make myself even more lovable, today I defend my educational background, which I thought spoke for itself. For this show of narcissism that's paralleled, y'all can thank my office neighbor, who, upon hearing the details of my academic history, questioned whether I slipped through the
During my high school senior year college application process, a teacher advised me not to go to school in the South. "You're Asian and you're Catholic," he warned, inferring neither is particularly welcome down in the land of the Dixie. I dutifully complied, with my most southern application going to Washington D.C., rest to the
I'm ignorant about many things, but I hide it well by talking more and louder. But one thing even that can't hide is my lack of vocabulary.
As I've written before, the so-called advice I received to overcome this challenge in high school, like don't bother reading ("look up every word you don't know in
My parents are typical Asian parents. They are controlling and overbearing. That I was their oldest--and only--son probably didn't help much.
I think it's psychologically healthy for every child to go through a rebellious period against his or her parents (within means, of course), but I fear I missed out on that experience when I had
Me and sports, we have a mutual understanding. Our relationship is fine so long as I don't cross a certain line. That not-so-thin line between observing and playing.
I'd like to whack the person who came up with the saying "practice makes perfect"--and slap anyone who continues to use it. Practice ain't no good when you've
I have gone through five years of grammar school, three years of middle school, four years of high school, four years of college, three years of law school and nearly two years of work experience. I have stayed consistently in one side of the political spectrum. I studied
I was never a fan of reading "classic" books, either in highs school or in college. This may come as a shock to all of you who know how highly I regard a liberal arts education, but I continue to prefer reading John Grisham to any classic, whether from the 18th century or the 20th.
The happiest moment of my life was when I got a 600 on SAT verbal. You may say it doesn't take much to make me happy, but you'd be missing my point. The statement is a reflection on my life-long struggle to achieve competence in verbalism, be it in English or Japanese.
My college professor once sarcastically remarked that I'm a collector. That I am. I don't just collect the popular, and the more common sensical, baseball cards or foreign money. No, no. I collect crap like movie stubs and hotel card keys (which I eventually stopped because I realized that's not crap, it's trash).
I ordered a sandwich at the firm's cafeteria and the guy gave me my order by saying, "Here you go, Sir." It was deja vu. Three years ago, when I was in law school, I ordered a sub at the dining hall on main campus (where undergrads eat) and I was
Recalling dreams is rare, but I remember two from last night.
In the first, Sarah Palin announced that she has "resigned" as the running mate of John McCain two days before the election, a belated "October surprise." I haven't the slightest doubt this dream was triggered by this article from CNN. I also vaguely recall McCain
