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Onsen
Onsen (温泉) in Japanese means “hot source.” The hot comes from the volcanoes across the country. Volcanoes generate geothermic energy which heats natural springs. The Japanese have flocked to hot spring baths for more than a thousand years. Today, onsen attract visitors from all over the world. When my husband and I visited Japan in…
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Novel Navigation
Reading and writing is what I do. Every day, all day, seven days in the week. My husband does the same thing and our house in Amsterdam perfectly accommodates us both. So why leave home? And yet that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Travel around the world for 7 months. Go to countries we’ve…
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Bonsai
Bonsai seems like such an obvious metaphor for editing a novel manuscript. The tiny tree, tweaked and twisted to look like the real thing, just as a novel strives to mimic life. When I think of bonsai, I’m whisked back to a Zen temple complex outside of Tokyo. It’s early in the morning and the…