Japanese

Matsuri opened in 1996. I place this in the second wave of Baltimore's sushi experience, when Japanese restaurants began to look as much like the pub next door as the tatami and shoji-screen stage sets of the first wave. Some old-school rituals are in place (diners receive hot cloth towels upon arrival). Some aren't (the hot tea is made from tea bags). I've returned to Matsuri a handful of times over the years, and I'm never disappointed. On the other hand, I've never had my socks knocked off there either, except for once, a lavish birthday dinner (not my own)

Regarding your article "Japanese lessons" (March 27), having spent almost two years in the service in Japan during the 1940s, I have a special interest in your description of the people living there today. It is a pity the same collaborative effort demonstrated by the Japanese in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami is not generally prevalent in our own urban communities today. Yes, it does exist in some areas, but on a national basis, it does not. The Biblical admonition "we are our brothers' keepers" should be our guide, but unfortunately it does not exist.

When I heard that another earthquake had rocked the land near where I had lived and taught in Japan, my heart sank. I could not help but think of all of my kind colleagues, students and friends in that small village. While I am now removed from that portion of the world and that part of my life, my appreciation of the Japanese and their ways remains at my core. Throughout my year of living in a Japanese village on the coast of Toyama, I was referred to daily as a gaijin , or alien.

Like millions of Americans I have watched with amazement how calmly and stoically the Japanese people have reacted to their triple catastrophe of earthquake, tsunami and radiation releases from crippled nuclear plants. I believe that their reaction can be explained if one refers to the Hagakure, also known as the Book of the Samurai, which still forms the basis for many cultural beliefs even in modern Japan. Consider in Chapter Eleven, words written in the 18th century by Tsunetomo Yamamoto: "Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily.

—When the massive, magnitude-9.0 earthquake that shook Japan to its core hit my neighborhood of Yokohama, 250 miles south of the epicenter, it registered an upper 5 on the shindo scale. Shindo, literally meaning "degree of shaking," is the official seismic intensity scale used in Japan. Ranging from 0 to 7, it factors in a host of tangibles and intangibles — including the sense of fear — as well as more easily observable physical phenomena like falling dishes, cracking walls and toppling structures.

For the first time since an 8.9 magnitude earthquake hit Japan, the Keio University High School lacrosse team can run in the sun and be boys again. Twenty-four players found sanctuary at Johns Hopkins' Homewood Field on Friday, escaping the trauma of the March 11 tsunami that raked the Japanese coast and ravaged the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. "They haven't been playing or running around on a field ever since the earthquake," said Atsuko Kuribayashi, one of three mothers serving as chaperones for the team.

One of the ugliest chapters in American history seems all the more painful to recall right now, with the hideous toll of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan still climbing, still threatening. But that chapter — the prison camps for loyal American citizens of Japanese descent after the outbreak of World War II — provides the chilling backdrop of David Guterson's popular 1994 novel "Snow Falling on Cedars. " The book, which was turned into a film and, more recently, a play, spins a "To Kill a Mockingbird"-like tale of murder, suspicion and prejudice in the Pacific Northwest, early 1950s, filtered through the residue of anti-Japanese sentiment that the war left behind.

On Dec. 7, 1941, a young Army nurse reported to Schofield barracks hospital in Hawaii for what would be her first solo weekend assignment. She would not leave for about three months. At 97, Myrtle Miller Watson, a longtime Baltimore resident who lives at Oak Crest Retirement Community in Parkville, can vividly recall the details of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the men whose lives she touched. She remembers the fatally wounded soldier, who could barely breathe but asked her to check on his buddy.

On a busy night at Sushi Sono , which by many accounts is every night, the wait for a table in the cramped entrance area, even with a reservation, can be an exercise in patience. Formalities and niceties are mostly dispensed with, and the service on a busy night can border on the hectoring. The idea that you could maintain a state of quiet contemplation in Sushi Sono's hectic dining room is laughable. None of this matters. The reason to make the trip to Lake Kittamaqundi, to put up with the confusing signs and alienating ingress into Wincopin Circle, is that Sushi Sono might just have the best sushi in the four-county area.

Laugh at them if you must, those Japanese men who are so serious about playing a dating video game that they recently took it one crazy step further: They took their digital dollies on a real trip to a honeymoon resort town outside Tokyo. But I think they're onto something. In case you missed this latest dispatch from the world of Japanese wackiness, a recent Wall Street Journal article reported on a wildly popular Nintendo DS game called Love Plus that is available only in Japan.