December 25, 2024 – Satoshi Manor. Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan.
Merry Christmas Everyone. I hope this season and day finds you surrounded by loved ones and enjoying peace. As for me – I painted a picture, I walked around and I ate some KFC. My neighbor brought me apples and oranges as a thank you for shoveling the snow from her driveway. I helped an old man who slipped and fell on the ice to get up and made sure he was stable and could carry his bags. I helped a mom with too many kids and suitcases to safely cross an icy road to do so. I said Merry Christmas to smiling strangers here in Japan. Then I watched Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis – which felt like a bizarro holiday movie.
This is the first Christmas ever spent in a home that I own. It’s my second Christmas in Japan. The first one was in 2022 with Sophia in Tokyo. That was incredibly fun. Last Christmas (2023) was a little bit weird. It was the first Christmas since Hanane and I divorced so I was living in my little place. Sophia lives with Hanane so on Christmas morning I went and picked her up and we opened up presents at my house. 2021 was our last Christmas together as a family, our marriage ended.
Dec 25, 2020. Man, what a long strange trip it’s been but here we are. Merry Christmas. It’s funny I didn’t write about this but in 2020 we took a trip to the Big Island for Christmas. Wait – maybe that was in 2018? Time flies and here I am jumbling it all up. I suppose the record could be set straight with Facebook.
Dec 25, 2019
Merry Christmas folks!
Here’s a picture from Christmas back in 2008. I had no idea what the world had in store for me. Hard to believe it’s been 11 years.
Still got the soul patch but the hair is mostly gone. Back in Hawaii now, which I didn’t really think would happen.
There I was, alone in the world with nothing but my friends and my hat and no home to return to, no home left behind, no home ahead of me. I’m glad I didn’t waste my freedom on some soul sucking job. I’m glad I decided to say fuck it and ditched it all.
And I’m glad, 11 years later that i sit here in Hawaii again on Christmas Day with my beautiful 8-year-old daughter and my lovely wife – and once again – I look outwards at the world ready to see what it has to offer and ready to find what I can offer it.
Dec 25, 2018
This was 40 years ago – Christmas in 1978. It’s funny how as I sit with my wife and daughter (mee looking at the instructions and my wife grabbing the wrappings – we almost mirror this picture of me with my parents from 1978. This was my favorite shirt as a kid with a van filled with dogs and cats it said “Keep on Truckin’ – of course it did. Merry Christmas everyone and Keep on Truckin!!!!!
