LIVING AMONG JAPANESE
MY JAPANESE NEIGHBORHOOD
Rough Waters of PEN-International Lifesavers
A Happy Holiday Season and a Happier, More Peaceful Year of the Snake 🐍 2025 The good news is that since being elected to the...
RACING AGAINST CANCER
Between the 2024 Paris Olympics & Paralympics, I hurried from Tokyo to Stockholm to meet my cancer-stricken fellow lifeguard, Witold...
YOSHIMI: SURVIVING PACIFIC BEACHES & GOLDEN TRIANGLE’S JUNGLE (4-Parts)
Before my blind friend Yoshimi joined our HGSC rough water team, she had risked her life among jungle tribes in the Thai-Myanmar-Laos...
OUR DEADLY PACIFIC RACE & OBON REUNION (3-Parts)
On that stormy Saturday afternoon during our 2023 Pacific Swim Race we never expected one of us would die before reaching the finish...
ROUGH WATER RACE: VIOLENT BEACH ARREST & LIFESAVERS
Protecting the +500 ocean swimmers in the Japan Power Sports Races has become tougher with each passing year of Covid. Though the number...
A JOURNEY WITH AN AUTHOR & HIS ALTER EGO
His creative drive has kept him on the edge. After brainstorming with Carlos Ghosn for half a year, an interview book that he had...
OUR WINTER BEACH SHONAN SURPRISES
The freezing wind blowing from Northern Pacific nearly forced us to cancel our Christmas Rough Water Swimming Charity. Except for a...
INSIDE AN OLYMPIC SECURITY TEAM 2021
A last-minute invitation to join an Olympic Security Team during the pandemic was as surprising for me as challenging for my fellow...
OLYMPIC LOCAL VIEWS: VOLUNTEERS
Though many of our friends have died during the past six months, my Japanese neighbor, Atsuko, refused to give up her Olympic dream. She...
KAMAKURA’S SACRED ROCK POWER AND BEYOND
Keeping foreign swimmers away from our neighborhood 2.5 km race to a secretive power spot seemed increasingly puzzling to me. Did the...
FORBIDDEN LOVE: A TATTOOED AINU GIRL & A POLISH PRISONER
Following the lifting of his death penalty, Bronko, a Polish student, was deported to a Siberian heavy labor camp in the Sakhalin forest...
THE GUARDIAN GODS & OUR SECOND CHANCE
Our magical journeys to the afterlife and back to our Shonan neighborhood seem as natural for many of my Japanese lifesaving friends, as...
AMONG OCEAN GUARDIANS, LIFESAVERS & WANDERING SOULS
Though our Japanese lifeguard team has been captained by Shonan’s top rough water swimmers during the pandemics, the real guardians seem...
FROM AN ARRANGED MARRIAGE TO A GENUINE LOVE
Among Yasuko's many passions was her growing love for a black Steinway and revisiting her nomadic family's secrets stored in a dozen...
MT. FUJI’S FIRST-AID-TEAMMATES... AND BEYOND
They were fighting to save a foreign climber’s life. But his heart attack was too massive. Mt. Fuji’s wind was too strong for a rescue...
LIVING LIFE PURPOSEFULLY
John broke the Guinness record by chance. The 12 FIFA World Cup finals on 4 continents that he attended consecutively remain vividly in...
AN AQUAMAN & 'HENNA GAIJN SWIMMING CLUB'
His crawl strokes were powerful, his endurance against waves, legendary. Some locals called him Aquaman and Kamakura bay has been his...
FALLING IN LOVE AMONG SURFERS
She fell in love with one of Shonan's leading pro-surfers while taking his lessons. Then she replaced her high heels and fashionable...
U-TURN: AN ACTOR & A CORPORATE EXECUTIVE
The acting in over 150 feature movies, and decades of managing global business ventures, didn't prevent Kato cousins to turn their lives...