by Joseph Simurdiak (The following story is an adaption of an ancient Japanese legend recorded in the 8th Century text Kojiki: The Record...

I. The Gruesome Swelter Summer is easily Japan’s most brutal season—at least in the Kanto region where I live. Folks who endure winter up...

The past five years… no chapter of my life has ever gone by so fast. My time as an English instructor on The JET Programme has concluded,...

On Good Friday I crossed the sea to Nagasaki Prefecture, then hiked north up the coast. At night I reached the seaside ruins of Hara Cast...

Tomioka Castle lies on the northern end of the Amakusa Islands. I had planned to continue the trek on foot, hoping to walk the entire rou...

If you were a Doomsday prophet in the late-1630’s Japan, you’d have had an easy time making your case. Those years were plagued with terr...

The Amakusa Islands don’t get many foreign visitors. Despite their beauty, they are a very quiet and remote region of Japan. Yet the view...

(The following post - the first in a series of five - comes from my travel journal detailing a journey I took through southwestern Japan ...

(Following the awards at Killer Nashville, the Price County Review ran an article on my award, my writing background, and my upcoming nov...

“Just keep your expectations realistic,” my father told me as we prepared our trip to Nashville. “Who knows, you might actually win this ...

For a first-time author, the literary world can seem a frightening, hyper-competitive place. It’s tough enough writing, revising, and com...

Amid soaring temple pagodas, countless bursts of cherry blossoms, and herds of deer that rove among yards, parks, and even the streets, a...

Iga and Koga. The names have a shadowy, almost mystical connotation as the twin heartlands of the ninja. Supposedly, as the stories go, t...

There comes a point during many of my travels—usually when I’m huddled under an umbrella beneath a tree branch in a sheeting rain, or shi...

As someone from a small, rural Midwestern town, I’ve found Tokyo to be a veritable jungle of new adventures, experiences, and opportuniti...

One of Japan’s peculiar delights is the seeming prevalence of quiet, serene, out-of-the-way temples and shrines, hidden in the nooks and ...

Somewhere in the midst of writing my novel, I reached a point where I could barely proceed. I’d hit writer’s block, though perhaps not in...

Though I was born in summer, I’ve always been an autumn child at heart. The poetry of fall lies in its distinct melancholy—that time when...