Leaving the bubble of Japan, where illiteracy and almost non existent Japanese renders the world a warm, unfathomable soft haze of obscurity, is shocking. Every word in print and voice is like an assault, too much information about absolutely everything. It takes almost a week to tune out every casual conversation at the next table, and skip over all but the bold print. Returning to San Francisco after 11 years is delightful, so much is familiar, yet of course places change. Dear welcoming brothers brothers Andy and Johnny have a new home (of 7 years), a comfortable, lived in, sprawling house packed with Johnny's pottery, souvenirs from Oz, mementos from relatives gone, and one of my mothers paintings on the wall. We estimate that our guest suite filled with vases of flowers, is bigger than our
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