The new foreigner in my neighborhood is… Me. Yes, I’m new! At least from the chin up. Not so long ago, I wrote a column about losing my hair. Well, I've found it. On my face. I have grown a beard. I now look like Yosemite Sam. I even have his beady eyes. How this came about is not nearly as interesting as the effect it has had. After over three decades in Japan, I’ve been reborn as a foreign resident.

Gaijin/immigrants and their issues are catching attention now, as a growing nationalist movement searches for bogeymen in regard to various Japanese woes, with foreign residents being an easy, defenseless and largely innocent target. Sound familiar with headlines elsewhere? I have long years at this and know few immigrants mean anyone any harm. We all gain our footing little-by-little, one step at a time, often tripping, but always rising back, as we strive to find our way i

I prefer this season not as one of tinsel, lights and storefront carols, but rather as one of quiet — a season of soft-falling snow, a season of anticipation, a season of memories. In this season I am haunted by the memory of a Christmas past, that of my very first Christmas in Japan in 1976. And like the Dickens messenger from the shadows of distant youth, the ghost that I welcome is not unfriendly at all.

In the heart of downtown Shinjuku there's a land -- far over the rainbow -- where dreams really do come true. That is, if your dream involves a bowel movement. Fittingly, it’s called the Toto Super Space, a showroom for bathroom fixtures set on the lofty 26th and 27th floors of the L-Tower Building, a place where visitors can flush their troubles away. And -- if they are perhaps so inclined -- their little dog too.

I was sitting in my office on the second floor of my home in Saitama, tapping away at the end of a draft for a future edition of this column

Time to take up the topic about which everybody moans, but no one ever writes columns about: the Tokyo heat.

This duck story is special. For my duck belonged to the Japanese Emperor.

The warmth of the holiday season often cooks up a nice story,