Our family temple is about 300 years old, and is famous for its garden of (azalea). When I first came to live here in the 1980s, it was...

Should I put “trigger warnings” on this blog post? Would people be triggered by my mentioning insults, suffering, disturbing images,...

The other evening I was out for a walk and noticed, walking west, that the sun was about to set. A few minutes later I watched as the...

"Broken Tile", original painting by Rebecca Otowa 2021 I’ve been thinking a lot about COVID and coercion lately. By this I mean, how the...

I am sitting at the front window of my living room, which opens onto the front yard, and it’s raining a bit. This is the wettest August...

Feelings always run high for me at the two big holiday seasons of the Japanese year, O-Bon (August) and O-Shogatsu (New Year). Perhaps...

Hello from summery Otowa! Please check out the summer pictures now up on the website. Here is a blog written by my grandchildren about...

Identity is a funny thing. When you are young, you don’t have much idea of it, and in the first part of your life a lot of energy is...

(A correction to the last blog – awa is not a nut like chestnut, but a type of millet. Excuse the error.) I don’t remember when it was...

Many places in Japan are regarded as romantic. One such place is the Gokayama Gassho villages in Toyama Prefecture, and the related...

I’ve been thinking about the difference between loneliness and aloneness. I vacillate between the two – ironically, I often feel more...

Spring festival procession, involving half the town, hundreds of years old – canceled for the first time since large-scale roadworks...

Recently I had some dental work done, a tooth pulled actually, and before that I organized my bedroom so that I would be able to spend a...

The other day in the supermarket I saw a checkout girl hurrying an elderly man who was trying to get his money, card and receipt all...

I know a lot of people who will be bidding 2020 farewell with a sigh of relief, and anticipating a better year to come. From a big...

My mother, Lucy Phillipp Rasmus, turned 100 on November 1, 2020. Five days later she departed this life. I wasn’t beside her for either...

My husband recently bought a handmade wok at a craft fair. It cost 8000 yen -- the equivalent of about $90 US. I didn’t object, because I...

I have always been attracted to Tibetan Buddhism, its pragmatism and its beauty. One of my favorite spiritual leaders is the Tibetan...

In this time of COVID-19, it is rare to have somewhere to go and really go there. Thus, I was happy to be sitting once more, after an...

The Challenge of Real Change This blog is slightly longer than usual. Think of it as compensation for not writing in so long. Things are...