When East Marries West

"When East Marries West" ran in The Japan Times from 1998 to 2015, with over 400 editions. Most

now rest behind a website paywall. Here, I will upload one or two editions a month, free of charge.

The early columns offered funny commentary on East/West family and marital mishaps. Within a year I had depleted my supply of personal anecdotes and cast my humor in a wider direction – with cultural observations, comic dialogues, literary parodies and continued swipes at marriage, parenting and aging, always with one foot in Japan and the other in the American Midwest.

If you read my columns then, please enjoy them here once more. If not – Welcome to my world! Which is sometimes wry, sometimes goofy and sometimes bittersweet. If you have an interest in Japan or just like to grin, please be my guest. I will be posting original content as well.

Here are six favorites to start with:

Love Finds a Way — A skeptical Japanese mother-in-law meets her very first grandson.

The Ghost of a Christmas Past — An unexpected gift, fifty years ago, on my first Christmas in Japan.

A Little Toilet Humor — Japan's high-tech toilets, and the culture shock they come with.

Love Stories: The Five Rules — Hollywood has rules for love stories. Here is how my marriage fits.

Home, Home on the (Kanto) Range — The comic saga of buying a house in Japan.

Abbott and Costello in Tokyo — Classic English wordplay meets the Japanese language, with chaotic results.