I idolized my father. He excelled at the skills I wanted to be naturally gifted at and wasn't. He noticed I asked for repeats of words and sentences often when I was a toddler. He noticed that my eyes wandered quickly from a person's face to the next, most fascinating artifact nearby. I was not good at being present, focusing, or listening. So he taught me the value of meditation. "I was only 5, so he promised to bring me a lychee Calpis drink if I sat with him 5 minutes bein

Hana Mizuki met Reiji Matsui in 1994 when she saved enough money from her eclectic business ideas and projects to tour Japan for a year. She grew up in Jamestown, California - a suburban city determined to defy the wheel of time and be a living testament to colonial, vintage townscapes. It was a small town with not much to do besides reminisce and live like she was still in in the 1950's era. For a blooming, beautiful, and aspiring Japanese-American young adult woman - that w

"Tsukasa! Wait for me!" I yelled out after my older brother. Growing up with the popular, 3 years my senior sibling that outshone me in everything. Grades. Girls. Sports. He obviously inherited my father's height. I did not. "I felt like I was always trying to catch up to him, but never succeeded to." He was the basketball star, I was the class jester. I wanted to be just like him: popular, asked out on dates by pretty girls, teacher swooning over him. I was the angry one - a