HERE IS a link to my latest, and posibly last, column for the IHT/Asahi. We are undergoing some radical "restructuring," as are many papers worldwide. No, I am not losing my job. As usual I am including the full text because these things only seem to survive online for a short while. I would like to thank my editor, for without her efforts these little ditties would have been a lot worse. You may wonder why these articles were so short. Well, first we built a 500-word news hole and forced the writers to fit their works into it. A hard word count does wonders for concise writing. Called Breathing Space, it appeared once a week, and anyone in the newsroom was welcome to contribute.
Family hits the road for a scenic drive through Tokyo and Chiba
"Hey," I shouted from the bedroom, "Let's go for a doraibu."
"What?" my wife, Kiyomi, yelled back from the living room.
I took a couple of strides across the condo. She was plopped down on the carpet in front of the TV. The dog was by her side. They were watching a Korean drama. Neither understands Korean, and the dog can't read subtitles, but both looked content.
"Let's go for a doraibu," I repeated.
Kiyomi hit pause. She gave me an irritated look. The dog looked at me, too. Its expression was harder to read. Irritation or gimme a cookie, who can say. "What's a 'doraibu?'" Kiyomi asked, wanting to get back to her TV show.
"You know," I said, placing my hands in the approved 10-and-4 position and turning an imaginary steering wheel. "Doraibu."
She shook her head. "Drive? You want to go for a drive. In the car?"
I nodded. "I thought you called it a doraibu."
She grimaced, her finger poised over the TV remote.
"Well, that's what all my students called it when I taught English," I hurriedly explained. They all said it was their hobby."
It was true. In the burbs of Osaka, where I taught, driving seemed to be the No. 2 pastime, only slightly behind that other well-known hobby, sleeping.
"That was about a million years ago," my wife reminded me.
"Well, uhh--"
She hit the remote. "Whatever. We'll go. Just let me finish watching this."
Two hours later, we climbed into the car and got on the road. "This was your idea. You should drive," my wife said.
"Yeah, but ..."
I didn't have a driver's license. The last time I drove, I crashed a jeep into a hut made of scrap sheet metal and palm fronds. I was drunk. Half a lifetime ago.
"Ahh, the open road," I said, stretching my arms as she pulled into Tokyo traffic.
"Where do you want to go?"
I set the dog down by my feet and gave it a canine cookie to shut it up. "Anywhere's fine. You decide."
My wife swerved to avoid a lane-encroaching dump truck and muttered to herself.
Soonish, we were out of the city and cruising in Chiba Prefecture. At least I think it was Chiba. Kind of hard to tell with all those noise-abatement barriers they line expressways with. Not exactly a cruise through the south of France, but it would have to do.
The dog fell asleep in my arms and started to snore. I could understand; the car was toasty. My eyelids felt a bit heavy.
"Hey, you two. Wake up!"
The dog yipped in confusion; I jerked against the seat belt and opened my eyes. The passenger-side door was open, my wife hovering over me. A gray concrete warehouse loomed. Giant red letters on the building said: Costco.
Kiyomi jerked her thumb at an oversized, overstuffed shopping cart behind her and said, "Load up the trunk, your doraibu is over."
