journal features

what's this - warm nigiri?

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Miyakonojo, Kyushu, 2012.12.24

What's going on, Japan? I'm gone for two years and return to find that your convencience stores have started nuking the staple "o-nigiri" rice balls? Call me a relic, call me what you will, but I believe that rice balls are a dish best served cold. Like revenge.

I have to say, I've been suffering a bit of culture shock, being back in this country where I so recently lived. It's pretty disorienting.

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner