JUST SAY MAHALO®

Melody:    I’m ready, Grandpa! Grandpa: Hey, you have your boots on backwards! Melody:   No, you need your glasses, Grandpa! Grandpa: Oh, okay! Melody:   Let’s go! And so Grandpa and Melody embarked upon a grand adventure into the Pure Land Forest, with Melody’s left shoe on her right foot, and her right shoe…

As our son Akira Kendall marks his 28th birthday, I realize: (1) our son is a man, a loving husband, a great father. Our time as parents is complete. (2) our granddaughter is no longer a baby who needs me to change her diapers. How fast babies grow up! (3) Life is indeed impermanent but…

Dear Mimy, Before we were married 30 years ago, had a son 28 years ago, and were blessed with a lovely daughter-in-law five years ago and a precious granddaughter three years ago, there was just the two of us and the love we shared. You have given me everything I ever wanted, helped me achieve my…

Me:           Hey, Melody, what are you doing with grandpa’s iPad? Melody:  I changed password! Me:           Oh. Okay.

My mom, Ruby Kiyohara, kept a file of my Dharma School projects … and yesterday granddaughter Melody made her first Dharma School project, an origami Daruma. Some day, years from now, Melody will find this stuff in a box on a dusty shelf somewhere, and wonder just what the heck Grandpa was thinking. And then she’ll…

Mimy and I had our first date in 1981 at Layla in the Jiyugaoka area of Tokyo. For our first date, we both brought dictionaries: Japanese-English for me, English-Japanese for Mimy. Despite the language barrier, we fell in love and so I studied harder, we kept dating, and my Japanese became fluent, which became the basis…