Notes from the Obstacle Course Dr. Michael Peckitt It is New Years Eve in the average family household in Japan, at about a quarter past seven in the evening. This can mean only one thing: it’s time for the Kohaku! The Kohaku Uta Gassen (in its 64th year), often simply Read more…
Notes from the Obstacle Course Dr. Michael Peckitt Christmas in Japan means Chicken. I usually date the beginning of Christmas in Japan by the moment you notice Colonel Sanders outside a KFC wearing a Santa hat. So Christmas in Japan this year started around November 10th. Shortly after the Colonel Read more…
Notes from the Obstacle Course Dr. Michael Peckitt There are times when, as a disabled person, I have to remind myself to be shocked by what someone might say about my being disabled, or about the topic of disability in general. I have after all, been told on more than Read more…
Notes from the Obstacle Course Dr. Michael Peckitt The doors slid open on the nearly vacant subway car and a mass of passengers piled in. All the available seats were filed in a wild flurry. Well, almost all. People either spurned the empty seat or ignored it as if it Read more…
Notes from the Obstacle Course Dr. Michael Peckitt She experiences the small daily shock of reentry that every foreigner in Tokyo knows. A sudden, pulse-quickening awareness of the obvious: Here I am, in Japan. Every morning it takes her by surprise – the sudden consciousness of profound difference… Even after Read more…
Notes from the Obstacle Course Dr. Michael Peckitt I see it as a twilight genre between the night of confession and the daylight of criticism. The“I” with which I shall occupy myself will not be the “I” that relates back strictly to myself, but something else, some residue, that remains Read more…