It’s been a long, sometimes lonely three years since COVID-19 arrived in the world and changed all our lives. For many of us, this holiday season may be the first since the pandemic shutdowns when we’ll be traveling to visit family once again, and dining with them. (Of course, we didn't know a historic deep freeze would disrupt nationwide travel...
Racial stereotypes used to be part of the American consumer landscape – everywhere you turned there was a depiction, playful caricature or a ghastly exaggerated image of a person of color on commercials and ads on television or publications, or on packaging on store shelves. But if nothing else, the recent years of anti-racism protests in the wake of the...
NOTE: This is a re-publication of a Nikkei View blog post I wrote back in 2009, which an article in the New York Times linked to this week. The original version was on an older site and the images had been unlinked (and the food festival that inspired the original post has evolved into the Far East Fest, which was...
The Tokyo Olympics has been taking a lot of my attention now that it’s finally arrived, and I’m glad it seems to be running well, with few health issues even though Tokyo outside of the Olympics is suffering from an increase in Covid-19 infections. I hope the competition can continue, and that the Paralympics in several weeks can also be...
A great American photographer died on January 27 at a hospital in Queens, New York, his hometown. But you may not recognize his name: Corky Lee. Like the subject of his half-century career, Asians in America, who have historically been invisible to mainstream Americans, Corky was invisible – he didn’t seek the spotlight, he just wanted to record the community around...
If nothing else, the pandemic of 2020 has caused many of us to hunker down and go out much less than before – if at all. With restaurants, bars and clubs shut down, many shops closed other than essential businesses for groceries, gas and whatnot, and no concerts, movies or other events to attend, our entertainment options became limited. And yet,...
Anyone who knows me knows that I love to eat. I’m a foodie. I love restaurants (I’m opinionated about them, too). And, I love to cook. I post photos of my food on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, and even use the hashtags “#twEATs” and “#foodporn.” I like all food from around the globe, from burgers and pizza to Middle Eastern, Italian,...
In a previous life during my long and winding journalism career, I was a rock critic. I was the music editor for Denver’s weekly newspaper, Westword. So when the Denver Press Club recently asked me to participate on a panel discussion for the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock music festival, I was eager to join in the fun. I write a...
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