Kyou nite mo kyou natsukashiya… Though in Kyoto, I long for Kyoto…
Knowledge has always flowed upwards, to bishops and kings, not down to serfs and slaves. The principle remains the same in the present era . . . governments dare to aspire, through their intelligence...
It seemed he’d recently learned the value of playing up the difficulty of accomplishing whatever he was tasked with, the better to play the hero when he subsequently pulled it off. He was overusing th...
I walked for hours, marveling at the extent of the destruction. Cars drove through Daitokuji Temple. Mount Hiei, the birthplace of Japanese Buddhism, had been turned into a parking lot, with an entert...
I looked out at the street beyond the overhang. The rain was coming in at gray angled streaks. One of my hands moved to her cheek. I closed my eyes. Her skin was wet from the rain and I thought of tea...
I have no patience for anyone who enjoys meat but moans about slaughterhouses, who wears cheap clothes but deplores sweatshops, who weeps about climate change from behind the wheel of an SUV or from t...
I had been watching the yakuza for over a month now, and knew his routines. I’d learned that he liked to vary the times of his workouts, sometimes arriving at the gym early in the morning, sometimes a...
I didn’t say, I’ll call you. I didn’t hug her because of the wet clothes. Just a quick kiss. Then I turned and left. I made my way quietly down the hallway to the stairwell. I could tell she thought s...
I didn’t know what I wanted. I trained at the Kodokan and reflected at quiet shrines and enjoyed my jazz clubs and coffee houses and whisky bars. I took long, nocturnal walks through the damascene cit...
His gal had thrown down, and he was going to follow her wherever that led.
Her English, though accented, was idiomatic. She would have learned it young enough to pick up the idiom, but not quite young enough to eradicate the accent.
He was blushing. Christ, the kid was so transparent. Harry, are you going to tell me you’ve got a girlfriend? I asked. The blush deepened, and I laughed. I’ll be damned, I said. Good for you. He looke...
He shrugged. You know I was in the dark about all that as much as you were. This time it’s straightforward. And sanctioned. Sanctioned by whom? He looked at me. By the proper authorities. All right, I...
Glock with an exceptionally long magazine.
For some, the distance between who you were and who you have become is unbridgeable, and the dissonance attempted repatriation creates is a constant reminder of the very changes you want so badly to f...
But we rarely see what we prefer to overlook.
Because we’re friends, dumbass. Friends stay in touch. I won’t lie to you, you’re so good at reading people, but sometimes you assume everyone else is just like you, and that ain’t the way the world w...
And Harry’s bug and video detector was blessedly quiescent.
The young man’s blindness irreparable, his mistakes immutable, the consequences irreversible.
Somnolent