Devenish

Sakura at Okamoto Station Turning 50, as I did last month, is a sobering experience. Not literally in my case, though I know people who clamber onto that particular wagon at this time of life, in a futile attempt to smooth out the grim inscriptions of a hundred or more wrinkles—what might have once been called 'laughter lines', a term that now emerges as risible euphemism—or to repair the myriad other external signs of physical neglect and unhealthy eating. We only fool ourselves—though that is, I suppose, no slight achievement, and perhaps a sufficient delusion. No, it is the figurative sobriety occasioned in passing a half-century, evidenced by the tone of these lines, that has been most breath-catching these past few weeks, and not in a good way. This cloying heavy chill has, of course, been exacerbated by the unbearable lightness (to pilfer a nice expression from my youth) of the youth around me at the beginning of a new term in a new university. In one sense, I am

Blogging is no different from any other activity: once the momentum is lost, it's hard to get going again. So pushing, grinding, out these first few lines is even more difficult than I had anticipated. Yet looking back on the posts from last year, I can see some value in the enterprise, as a family document, and from the fact that some readers come back regularly to browse... So let's begin with the headlines, in brief. After months of torpid indecision, Ayumi and I decided not to return to our professional lives in England—though we spent a very pleasant two months there in February and March—but to give Japan a go for a bit longer. In December last year, I was offered a permanent job at Konan University in Okamoto—Kobe's Hampstead, if Kitano is Chelsea), where I have now started teaching English and Linguistics courses to a delightful bunch of students, in the company of friendly and extremely welcoming colleagues. First day at Konan (Okamoto) The professor I'm