Monday, September 22, 2008

Somewhere in Tokyo

Somewhere in Tokyo is an old-style composition book with 10 years of journal entries.  One of those Holstein Cow,  mottled black-and-white cardboard-covered jobs with the cloth tape binding they used to use in school.   Killing time, as one so often does while traveling, I must have left it sitting somewhere, distracted after riffling through my Japanese vocabulary cards or searching the Japan Times for baseball scores or other news from home.  For some reason I always wrote in it using a fountain pen. With its decade-long list of names, places and events, it is amazing how often I wish I had it back. It was not always kind in it's portrayals but I think it was more revealing in what it said about me than what I said about others.  The person who found it would have seen that I know a lot less now that I thought I knew 10 years ago.  Anyway, it was my traveling companion for 10 years and now it's gone.  So this blog will replace that for the time being. I always considered my journal as private (though it was open to my wife, of course) but events have shown that presumption to be false.  The Bible says that there is nothing hidden that won't someday be revealed, so this will get a jump on the process.  Please enjoy.