I was born in San Francisco in 1958.  I guess I am truly "bicoastal," for until this year I have lived either in California or Japan.
 
I married the same person twice: First in a Shinto ceremony in Tokyo, then, six months later, in a Jewish ceremony at an old hacienda in Santa Ana, California. (Oy, you should have seen our phone bills!)
 
We are blessed with two terrific children, and many friends from all over the world.
 
Currently, I am a Visiting Researcher at The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I am also an associate professor, with tenure (which is still rarely given to foreigners in Japan), at Hiroshima University, Japan.
 
 
After high school, I went to Orange Coast College (Costa Mesa, Calif.), where I fulfilled my general ed. requirements, and studied photography, cinema, fine arts, philosophy, and dance. I earned my BA in philosophy and comparative literature at California State University, Long Beach. In 1991 I completed my doctorate in Comparative Culture at the University of California, Irvine.
 
 
Between my scholarly activities and my family, I don't have much free time. But, my interests include ballroom dance, food and cooking, and most recently, Japanese flower arranging, or Ikebana. I have a teacher's license from the Ikenobo School of Ikebana.
 
The photograph you see here is of my entry in a Hiroshima area katen, or flower exhibition; fall, 1999. In Ikebana, evoking a sense of the season in the viewer is essential to a successful arrangement, and expressing one's own genuine feelings about the season is regarded very highly.
 
Although not indigenous to Japan, my sense of fall is Halloween and dry fields. My arrangement uses decorative corn, relatively new to Ikebana, and the very traditional Iris; both are seasonal materials.
 
They are arranged in the highly traditional Shoka style, using the futakabu, or two roots, pattern. The jack-o'-lantern, on the wall, and the corn-shaped candy, surrounding the arrangement, are available in the USA only in the fall.