Last summer during vacation season, I paused from my reprints of Japan Times columns to present photos from various trips taken through the years. You can revisit those previous photos here. I have just returned from a journey abroad, so I thought to take another pause and post a line-up of my travels, not only of the recent trip, but of all my wanderings since that the "On the Road" publication in 2025. The title this time: "On the Road... Again."

This happened 22 years ago. Yet a death in the family cannot be counted in years. It’s always as if yesterday. With Japan’s season of obon just past, the time seems appropriate to look again at that somber “yesterday” when my wife’s mother passed away. Two years back, I posted a column that described her initial decline into failing health. To read that again, please click here. Never was she hospitalized. We had care workers dropping by the house daily. She died in her bedro

Mid-August is Japan's traditional ghost season, when the spirits of the dead are believed to return to visit their families. Japanese also believe that nothing takes the heat from a sweltering summer night better than a spine-chilling tale of ghosts. The story below, first published in The Japan Times, is my fictional tribute to that tradition.