Borderless Culture™ Life & Style: November 2010

11.26.2010

Memories of a Geisha

The following are some pictures taken from a recent trip to Kyoto of the traditional Gion district. Looking at these pictures now, it feels like it was all a hazy dream from long long time ago....

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If you're happy and you know it....

So it seems that researchers from Harvard Medical School (Nicholas Christakis) and UC San Diego (James Fowler) after studying close to 40 years of data concluded that when an individual becomes happier, there is a strong likelihood that a friend living within a mile experiences 25% increased chance of happiness. A spouse has an 8% chance to be more happy and a sibling who lives within one mile a 14% chance; and your next door neighbor 34% chance of greater happiness. There are however, a time and geographical constraints. The effect of someone else's happiness on your mood last less than a year. And of course the closer your happy friends are, the more likely you will reap the benefits of increased happiness levels.

Interestingly enough, unhappiness and sadness does not spread the same way.

Reliving the Best Part of my Childhood in Japan through Grilled Food

Since leaving Tokyo 20 years ago, there were foods I relished as a child that I thought I would never find again despite desperate attempts to do so. It wasn't that the food was so gourmet, in fact it was quite pedestrian. The grilled chicken or beef on a stick could all be bought at a tiny stall not far from our apartment in Tokyo. There were no room for seats. Our food came in crisp white paper bags and we would eat the warm flavorful pieces of meat while walking back home. Then there was the time we were on Mt. Fuji, freezing, surrounded by snow and the warm salty smokey smell of grilled corn wafted into our nostrils. I had never eaten corn so sweet yet savory. Since moving to North America, I have searched and searched but the flavors were just never quite right. They just weren't the same - until tonight. Nanbankan is hands down the best yakitori restaurant I have gone to outside Japan. And when I sank my teeth into that charcoal grilled chicken and that grilled corn I was eleven again.