Dears, Some bits and pieces didn’t make the blog, so I thought that a few “outtakes and observations” might be in order. When I lived in Seoul in 1988 (coming from Florida and Kenya), I was frozen all the time. I didn’t have a good coat, partly because I always chose fashion over function. This…

Dears, This morning I leaped out of bed to get downstairs for my two eggs, toast and coffee. Actually, it wasn’t the food that I was excited to see, it was the ebullient enunciating lady-chef. And there she was in her white-clothed glory ready to greet me. “GOOD MORNING DARLING!” she called out to me….

Dears, I arrived in the Land of the Morning Calm at 9:09 p.m. In my first three hours here, albeit in the evening, I’m pretty calm myself. My long flight from Chicago to Tokyo was flawless and, dare I say, delightful. I decided not to take an Ativan for anxiety because I realized that taking…