Four decades and (cough, cough) some years ago, it was a dark and stormy night outside the Tokyo Sanitarium Hospital, 171 Amanuma 1-chrome, Suginami-ku. A shout rang out, lightning cracked, the neon of the Ginza promised more than it could deliver, and as the clock struck 10:36 p.m., as the Fates and Sibyls had possibly foretold (the signs were cloudy, vague, ambiguous), the future blogger was born mewling and gasping into the incandescent world. Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! And as they said in the Borsht Belt, I’ve been trying to get back in every since. My bottom was soundly smacked (huh! I bet there have been plenty who’ve wanted to wallop me like that since), as I dangled there like a lobster in the doctor’s hands, but at least I wasn’t swaddled tighter than an Egyptian cat mummy (I ain’t that old). I was born under the sign of Dr. Spock and raised under the sign of Mr. Spock. Yes, I can do the “live and longer prosper” hand sign with both hands. My six word autobiography: Born in Japan. Still not Japanese.

A legend about da Vinci is that a red kite (Milvus milvus) flew into his nursery and tickled his chin with its mighty feathers. GGP tells me that an owl landed on the hospital window when she was born. With my luck, I probably had some of the quasi-occupying power’s F-104s come screaming out of the sky overhead….