Traveling Jichan

This past month I have really taken this whole Traveling Jichan thing to new heights. In the past month I have been in Oregon, Japan, Singapore, Bali and now….New York City, or Brooklyn to be exact. The Brooklyn trip was a bit of a surprise but just a couple of days after arriving back in…

So ever since we started having kids, many moons ago, we have referred to Midori’s Mom as Bachan, in pretty much the same way I am referred to as Jiji these days. Bachan turns 88 years old next month and has lived with her oldest son, Shogo and his wife Mamiko for the past 30…

It’s embarrasing to admit how much time I sit staring at the computer thinking about the title for each blog. It’s also amazing to think I can sit there for so long and come up with, well, titles that are not at the level that are commensurate with the time spent on them. I know….confusing…

As we rolled into 2019 it occured to me that the last time I started a year not affiliated with the Navy either as active duty or reserve was 1979. I headed off to boot camp in July of that year. Weird. So I guess this is the year where I really move on to…

I thought my next post would involve many photos of Portland, Oregon with scenes of the Willamette River meandering through the city and the many bridges that connect the eastside and westside. But our ten days in Portland was more about being a Jichan and less about the traveling and documentation. It was a wonderful…

No, this is not a post about a Christmas song that was written in 1944 and won the Oscar for Best Song in 1949 for the movie Neptune Daughter but is now controversial. No, this is about living in Bali, wearing shorts and flip flops every day and then leaving a tropical island to go…

So the bags are packed and in a couple of hours we will be heading out to spend Christmas with the grandkids.  So this closes out the Bali chapter of 2018 with Bali 2019 just a few weeks away.  Midori arrived in mid-July and I got here a couple of weeks later.  In that five…

Okay, so first of all, the photos in this post have absolutely nothing to do with what I am talking about.  Just more random shots to break up my droning on about miscellaneous stuff.  So you can read a bit, take a break, look at a nice photo, and then continue. Second of all, in…

So a couple of weeks ago we were taking our sunset walk through the rice fields.  I was carrying my camera and taking pictures while Midori the dog whisperer was making friends with every dog along the way.  It was then that I noticed that the planting had begun.  There were eight or nine Balinese…

Alright, bear with me.  I pretty much wrote this entire post and then realized that, perhaps it was a bit long-winded.  Sad I know, but I am pretty excited about the rice fields and particularly about the rice field ladies.  But I kept writing and writing about the rice fields and by the time I…