Bob's Bullets - Catching up with Tokyo friends of years past, Ohtani talk, interesting books

CALIFORNIA — Machiko and I are back in the States for the summer at our house in Salinas, California. For those who don't know Salinas, it is the county seat of Monterey County in the Central Coast, a city of 163,000 people, and was the setting of the John Steinbeck novel and Elia Kazan/James Dean movie East of Eden. It also has some of the freshest air in the United States.

Shortly after our arrival in late July, we drove south down Highway 101 to the Paso Robles Allegretto Vineyard resort for a reunion with old friends from Tokyo in years past. Doug and Noriko Palmer. Rosser Brockman and Yin-wah Ma. Doug is a Seattle-based attorney recently retired who wrote the fascinating book Bruce Lee, Sifu, Friend and Big Brother. He was a longtime friend of the Kung Fu star.