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At the party I attended the other night, three out of the five people were smokers. One of the topics was why they had started smoking. One person said that he went to a barber shop run by a man in his 50s when he was growing up. The barber offered cigarettes to customers older than 20. As soon as he finished high school, the barber asked if he was going to college and offered him a cigarette. Another person said that he was working part-time at a construction site when he was in college. The people around him were regular construction workers, and they forced him to smoke.

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The New Year’s vacation is over now. How did you spend it? Did you get up early and see the first sunrise of the year? I did! Did you eat any Japanese New Year’s food? I only ate rice cakes, but my students told me that they ate “datemaki” (a rolled sweet omelet), “kurikinton” (sweetened mashed sweet potatoes and chestnuts), and “zoni” (rice cakes in soup). If you were watching TV, you probably saw the Hakone Ekiden, a long-distance relay race from Tokyo to Hakone and back. I saw some highlights. Did you make any New Year’s resolutions? My resolution is to read one book a week. (by Professor Douglas Jarrell)
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