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.

The hardest thing I have ever done was to teach my own children English. Like with most international couples, my wife and I have secured dual citizenship for our kids, meaning that they themselves get to choose their nationality once they reach adulthood. Yet, long ago we realized that the choices we made for them when they were little would pave our son’s decisions. Emphasis on either language, we felt surely would point them in the direction of that culture.

2014 is — according to the Chinese zodiac — the Year of the Horse. We thus celebrate the spin of the 12-year cycle. This is our year! "Well, they can take it back," she says. "I don't want it." Right. It's not like they give you anything. They don't hand you a golden key to the planet or a weekend pass to Disneyland, or even a packet of tissues. I could get that much at least with a quick trot around Shinjuku Station. The only thing you get is a horsey glow — that is, if y

I learned to swear as a boy. It was the only thing my father ever taught me. He compensated for his lack of attention in other matters by instructing me well in this. And if you think that there is nothing therapeutic, nothing enriching, nothing self-purging about a decent five-second binge of bile, then I can only advise that you try it.

There are rules in love stories.

Sometimes love does find a way. Sometimes it is the only thing that can.

I asked my future wife to marry me while we were in the ofuro.

Most Japanese serve rice at every meal and feel a meal is incomplete without it. Many also assume that Westerners think the same about bread

I am sometimes asked how I met my wife. I like to say this unknown girl rushed up and tackled me. My wife’s version is different