The concierge at my hotel had to ask me twice. "You want what?" "A bookstore," I said. Over my shoulder showed the never-sleeping glitz of the casino. "You want what?" she asked yet again. But then shook herself and said there had indeed been a bookstore on the strip in years past. Her pupils grew, as if she were gazing into history and the noble days of the Southern Paiutes. "But now you'll have to take a cab into the city." A notion I scoffed at.

I slouch on a rumpled cot in a hospital ward in the American Northwest. My second son lies out before me with tubes in his body and a packet of blood suspended above his head. A nurse wiping his brow tells me she too has a 21-year-old boy, a marine somewhere in the firestorm of Iraq. "He usually e-mails every day, but I haven't heard from him now in a week." There is a tremble to her lips.

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

Heroes, in a mythological sense, always need a guide — a spiritual beacon to lead them safely through the dark forest of doubt and then onwards to face the twin pressures of fear and fate. "And for dinner," says my guide, "how about Hooters?" Hooters? And heroism? Not a likely match, but perhaps you sense my dilemma: How should I play my first visit to the land of hamburgers and hot pants? Should I go highbrow? Or low?

The snake is perhaps more tacky than menacing. To others, it shows only my poor taste in decoration. To me, however, the snake symbolizes something beyond. It signifies the choice I made in opting to live my life in Japan. An eternal reminder that I am snake-bitten. "Get rid of it," says my son. I can't. The snake, in its evil coil, is a scaly link between my two homes, one here and one in the States. Which of these is "abroad," I can no longer say.

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.

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

I have actually been to the Twilight Zone.

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,

She figured the last sight she would ever see would be that of a bear-sized American soldier chopping at her with a bayonet.

I have put down roots, dropped my anchor, pitched my tent, hitched my pony, cooled my jets and shelved my thesaurus. After 25 nomadic years,

One benefit of wedding into a Japanese family is the discovery that there is much more to Japanese cuisine than just sushi and tempura.

When I first came to Japan, I didn't believe in yakuza.

My old college roommate has named his dog after my wife. "Is this some sort of a prank?" I ask him.

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