Yakitori Tsukada, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan

We tried a lot of different types of places our first couple of days in Tokyo—a tendon place, a ramen place, a yakiniku place—all costing about $10 per person. We did a fancer meal our last night at Yakitori Tsukada, a yakitori place specializing in chicken, and really enjoyed it! The other thing to point out is that there is a lot of fish and beef in Japan, and it is nice to have another option altogether when you are eating out each and every day.

I love skewers, but the meal started with something I plan to try to make at home--potato leek miso soup. We managed to score quite a few different types of miso when we were in Osaka, and I think it would be possible. The fortune cookie style chicken cut out stuffed with chicken liver is not on that list, but we did pick up some persimmons at home because we had so many good ones, including here. Every part of fowl was offered, including some grilled quail eggs, duck breast, and even a chicken meatball to dip in a raw egg! My favorite was that, and my spouse liked the chicken shoulder best, but really, everything was delicious and I would recommend it.

Flashlight by Susan Choi

The Booker Prize short list for 2025 had some real gems in it, this among them. Flesh was the winner, and while it wasn't my favorite, it was very good. The Audition was weirdly innovation, The Rest of Our Lives was excellent up to the ending, and The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia was an excellent, long, messy saga that embraces both love and immigration. This one is also very good and quirky in it's story telling, which in the end I liked, although it took some time for me to get used to. Here goes. The the Kang family is damaged. Serk grows up an impoverished Korean in Japan. He immigrates to the US as a grad student after his family sets off for North Korea, lured by promises of socialist paradise. Anne has a child, Tobias, that she gave birth to at nineteen and signed away to her older lover and his wife. Her college plans are derailed, but she is able to find work as a transcriptionist for an eccentric academic, which is how she meets Serk. There is a mutual identification in their remoteness yet neither can figure out how to overcome it. Louisa—Serk and Anne’s only child—is not consciously aware of all that precedes her, but it is the water she swims in--nobody communicates. Anne welcomes Tobias back into her life without consulting Serk, and Serk takes an opportunity to relocate to Japan for a year without telling Anne of his primary goal: surreptitiously seeking out a path of return for his family. Louisa witnesses to shreds of each of her parents’ secrets and over time learns to nurture her own. So, yes, another messy family saga--I had the added luck to read it while I was vacationing in Japan, which added an extra layer to an already multi-level story.

Karate Kid Legends (2025)

What is it with the 1980's reboots? I watched this one on a long haul flight recently, and whil I did not like the other one I watched (one the critics and audiences alike did like), I enjoyed this--which was not true of the aforementioned critics and general audience. So proceed with caution. This is the sixth entry in the series, gives its intended audience—which is to say, anyone who enjoyed any part of the other movies—what they came looking for. No more, and for me at least, no less. Li Fong (ably played by Ben Fong, who is both acrobatic and charming, and I hope to see him again) is a teenager who moved from Beijing to New York City’s Chinatown because his doctor mom (Ming-Na Wen) got hired by a Manhattan hospital. Li is a character we haven’t seen before. There are early scenes at kung fu school where we see him being mentored by Mr. Han (Jackie Chan). Like every protagonist before him, Li gets bullied by unlikable thugs. They train at a dojo near his school. Their leader is karate prodigy Connor Day , two-time winner of the Five Boroughs tournament. Li’s school also happens to be near an independent pizzeria owned by former boxer Victor Lipani. Victor’s charming and witty teenage daughter Mia (Sadie Stanley) works the cash register. She and Li hit it off. Naturally, in order to turn the heat up, Mia was once Connor’s girlfriend. Connor’s father, who owns the dojo, is a mob-connected underworld figure who loaned Victor the money to open the pizzeria and expects to be paid back soon. You see where this is going, and this movie is all about nostalgia, so there are no surprises, although it was surprisingly nice to see the chemistry between Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio. Chan in particular remains the all-time best at getting laughs through martial artistry, and there’s ascene between him and Fong that wouldn’t look out of place in any other of Chan’s stuntwork ballets.

Inventing Japan by Ian Buruma

As you might suspect with a book that covers a hundred years of history and the core of a nation's identity in under 200 pages, there is some reductionism at work here. I read this in preparation for a tourism trip to Japan, and it reinforced other things that I had read, and seemed less anti-Asian than many other things I had read. Japan has been assiduous in its early days about isolation. The original opening of Japan came in the mid-1500s when European traders and Christian missionaries arrived. But the nation was closed back up at the start of the 17th century when the overt practice of Christianity was snuffed out and all trade reduced to Dutch sailors in Nagasaki. They didn't completely cut themselves off--Japanese intellectuals studied Western science and ideas — known as Dutch learning — in order to borrow what was useful. But the culture continued in seclusion until Commodore Matthew Perry appeared in Edo Bay on July 8, 1853, with four armed ships. This book covers the time from American Commodore Matthew Perry’s explosive appearance in Edo Bay to the end of the shogunate, the failed attempts at democracy that followed, the rise of militarization and colonialism, a war against Russia, a war against China and finally World War II, the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Douglas MacArthur as American overlord and a post-war commitment to an overheated economy with an emphasis on construction for the sake of construction. And in the epilogue the author takes the story even further with the boom of the Japanese economy and talk of a “Japanese Century” — and then the bursting of the bubble. There is so much more to the story, but this is a kind of Cliff Notes introduction.

Gardens in Tokyo

There are some huge beautiful green spaces in densely populated Tokyo, where you can sit on benches, listen to birds and get away from metros where you might on occasion have to shove yourself in backwards and hope the door closes—my close encounter involves having to stand n one foot initially because my other foot kept the door from closing. These were imperial grounds, shrines, and feudal gardens that remain today—and are free to roam. We visited two and it is amazing just how far from a busy city you feel in the The Imperial Palace East Gardens is a historical garden in the Tokyo Imperial Palace. The gardens were first used by the Tokugawa shogunate. The garden was built on the grounds of Edo Castle. Meiji Jingu Shrine is a Shinto shrine in Shibuya, Tokyo, that is dedicated to the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shōken. There are wide open spaces and on a weekend day there were dozens of couples and families fanned out over the lawn enjoying the peaceful surroundings.

Twist by Colum McCann

Here is the thing about this author. He is a very good writer, I enjoy the story mostly because the story teller is talented, but mostly I just do not care for the characters. The story starts off straight forward enough, but there is truth in advertising--the title lets you know that it is going to get messy. Anthony Fennell, an Irish writer down on his luck, gets an assignment from an online journal to write a piece on the undersea cables that carry the world’s data and the repair teams that patrol the oceans, fixing ruptures. He agrees to this because he has a bit of writer's block and he has an image of cruise ship rather than working ship and thinks he is going to get some time to write his own stuff as well. Fennell’s editor sends him to Cape Town, where he is to sign on with a repair ship and meet a man named Conway, who is in charge of operations. Conway is, and will remain an enigma: immediate and engaging at first, later aloof and noncommittal — and capable, as we’ll see, of extraordinary actions. Though they’ve just met, he straightaway asks Fennell to come meet his partner, Zanele, a South African-born stage actress. The three of them weave in and out of each other's stories throughout the book, all with an undercurrent of moving against the grain of society. It is a story well told.

Naked Gun (2025)

I guess I should have thought twice before watching this movie on a recent Trans Pacific flight. If I thought the original was dumber, what made me think that this wouldn't be dumber? Don't let me dissuade you though, because reading through reviews, I am pretty much alone on this. Liam Neeson plays Det Lt Frank Drebin Jr, who is the son of the LA cop once played by Leslie Nielsen, and haunted in a rather Freudian way by his late father’s reputation. He is given to making yearning monologues addressed to Drebin Sr’s presence, begging him to send a sign that he is there in spirit if not in person. Paul Walter Hauser plays his stolid partner Capt Ed Hocken Jr, son of Drebin Sr’s partner who was once played by George Kennedy. The new Drebin (who is old, BTW) investigates the possible murder of a man found dead at the wheel of a hi-tech electric car, and must confront the sinister plutocrat who invented this vehicle (sound like anyone we know?). There is a love interest, which I will not go into because even though this harken's back to an earlier sensibility, it is exaggeratedly offensive--and no where near far enough back for the likes of the current autocratic misogynist administration would like to go--Make Suffregettes relevant again kind of stuff--it is still beyond the pale. The new Naked Gun has the look and feel of an 80s LA action movie, with sense-memories of Beverly Hills Cop and Terminator, but not in a good way, at least for me. It did make me think i should not rewatch Beverly Hills Cop but rather leave it safely in my memory as not nearly as offensive as this.

A Marriage At Sea by Sophie Elmhurst

I read this when it was on Obama's reading list, and it is now also on the New York Times 100 Notable books for 2025. This is a story that is almost unbelievable yet true. ​​On June 28, 1972, 40-year-old Maurice and 32-year-old Maralyn Bailey, newly married but with this long held plan, set sail aboard a 30-foot sailboat they named Auralyn on what they hoped would be a yearslong voyage from England to New Zealand. Their plan was to travel across the Bay of Biscay to Spain, then to Madeira and the Canary Islands, then 2,700 miles across the Atlantic Ocean through the Caribbean, Panama Canal, across the Pacific Ocean to the Galapagos. After that, they’d sail to the Marquesas Islands, the Tuamotu Islands and Fiji, and then their final destination. But on March 4, 1973, eight months into their expedition, a disaster happened: a 40-foot sperm whale slammed into their boat, creating a gash in its side. Within minutes — just enough time for the Baileys to grab their passports, a log book, a compass, Maralyn’s diary and a few other essentials, before jumping into their 4.5-foot-in-diameter life boat and attached dinghy — their boat sank about 300 miles from the Galapagos. Of note, they did not have a radio on board, so there was no way for anyone outside them to know where they were. They survived for 4 months and several ships passing by that did not see them before they were rescued. They were emaciated, ill, and in need of long term nursing back to health, he more than she--but then what happened? They set out to do it all over again. It is very reminiscent of the Shackleton story--not only was their marooning of note, their inability to survive on land was also quite impressive and for me, incomprehensible.

Sumida Hokusai Museum, Tokyo, Japan

I love the Japanese Edo era woodblook prints, as did the impressionists, who I also love. This museum has just the works of Katsushika Hokusai. He moved dozens of times, but he was born in now Sumida-ku now and spent much of his life there. He also wrote some pieces of ukiyo-e of this area. This museum has collected only works of the artist. He is most famous for his wave print, and I love his Mt. Fuji series, but we saw depictions of courtesan life. These were produced in huge numbers and were hugely popular during the Edo period (1615 – 1868). They are known as ukiyo-e, and depicted scenes from everyday Japan. Ukiyo-e literally means 'pictures of the floating world'. The 'floating world' referred to the licensed brothel and theatre districts of Japan's major cities during the Edo period. Inhabited by prostitutes and Kabuki actors (Kabuki is a traditional Japanese form of theatre), these were the playgrounds of the newly wealthy merchant class. Despite their low status in the strict social hierarchy of the time, actors and courtesans became the style icons of their day, and their fashions spread to the general population via inexpensive woodblock prints.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

This is a lot about what the immigrant experience is like--in this case it is immigrating to America, but I suspect there is overlap with immigrating to other places. The United States is a place with a rich and deep Native American culture that is largely unknown and ignored and otherwise it is a jumble of cultural influence that is shallow and often troubled. So imagine having familial ties in a place that has deep cultural roots and centuries of conflict over them? On the surface, this is a novel about the relationship between Sunny Bhatia and Sonia Shah, whose families are neighbors but not friends, and whose attempts to make a match begin their on-off liaison. Where Sunny dreams of journalistic success, Sonia’s heart and mind lie in writing fiction. The sheer exhaustion – mental, physical and artistic – caused by the constant need for self-invention and reinvention, whether individual, societal, national or global--it does seek to accurately and productively capture this yearning for gravitas. Yet just underneath the surface of what they say they want is a search for belonging and being valued. It leads them to be together and apart, in India and the United States and back again, and yes, it spans years and it messy and complicated.