In 1619 Toyotomi Hideyoshi appointed one of his trusted retainers, Asano Nagaakira, Daimyo of Hiroshima. On arriving in Hiroshima, Asano Nagaakira ordered one of his own retainers, warrior and master of the tea ceremony Ueda Soko, to lay out a garden for his villa. The idea was to create the illusion of a “miniature [Read more…]
Last Tuesday was a national holiday (Labour Thanksgiving Day) in Japan and so I took the opportunity to go for a stroll up Mount Mitaki, one of the hidden gems on the outskirts of Hiroshima. The peak of Mount Mitaki is only around 350 metres high so it’s not too [Read more…]
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene is a modern American bestseller. It has sold over 1.2 million copies in the USA alone and has been translated into 24 languages according to Wikipedia – yes, the book even has its own Wikipedia page. But how many of those 48 [Read more…]
What on earth does Julius Caesar have to do with the coronavirus? Well, in Act Two, Scene Two of Shakespeare’s play, Caesar’s wife, Calphurnia, feels it is too risky for Caesar to go out to the Forum that day and urges him to stay at home. Staying at home is [Read more…]
One of the colleges I work at as a freelance English instructor resumed classes on Monday 11th May after a one month delay to the start of term due to the coronavirus pandemic. Each college has developed its own remote teaching strategy. In the case of this college, the staff [Read more…]
This is me, aged 9, on a trip to Stonehenge with my Dad. Later that day we drove down to the New Forest and camped there for the night. I wanted to see the Rufus Stone, but it was rather a disappointment, especially after Stonehenge! That evening we put up Dad’s army [Read more…]
I recently finished reading David Boyd’s lively translation of The Factory by Oyamada Hiroko, a contemporary Japanese writer of somewhat dystopian novellas who, incidentally, lives barely a stone’s throw from me somewhere in the western suburbs of Hiroshima. One of my English language students told her classmates and me about [Read more…]
This article about my experience of mahjong in Japan was first published on a now defunct blog back in 2001. From quite early on in my life I had wanted to learn to play mahjong. The teeming variety and exotic charm of the tiles fascinated me. When I accepted a [Read more…]
Over the last year or so I have created a Chess Opening Mnemonic Major Memory System For The 1.d4 Opening Repertoire for the White chess player. My memory system covers the first few moves (up to as many as 17 in one case) of 184 opening variations in the 1.d4 [Read more…]
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