I was diagnosed in the summer, ten days prior to my 71st birthday. The finding hit like an anvil dropped from the sky. Not due to my condition. I felt and feel fine. But rather for the shock to the spirit and the heavy fate the word “cancer” implies. And that it came at a moment when our very planet sits grim and benumbed. Wars, threats, shouting, violence – it seemed that our entire world had been diagnosed. With circumstances implying that it was far more than my own life

I did not sit down one day and decide to write a novel entitled, "Chop-Chop the Killer Whore." There’s a story behind it. A true story. And the story begins on Sept. 29th, 1958. On that day, in tiny Wyoming, Illinois, my Aunt Donna was murdered.

Jack Kerouac I am not but I am traveling this month and away from my computer cubbyhole in Tokyo suburbia. As such, I will pause on my reprints of Japan Times humor columns and run "a few" photos of other moments when I have been away and on the road.

A comet is not a matchstick hissing through the night and a galaxy is not a scoop of sugar tossed against the sky.

“The Keeper of Dragonflies” is the initial work in my online short story collection of the same name.

When it came to designing the cover of my comic thriller Chop-Chop the Killer Whore, I knew exactly what I wanted.