Every year America’s schools shut down for nearly three months—leaving families like single mother Olympia and her 6-year-old daughter Raina struggling to keep up.
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Posted inReading List
Really Good Shit: A Reading List
“As the Japanese children’s book author Tarō Gomi once wrote: everyone poops. But we don’t talk about this openly or often enough.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
How Japan Stood Up to Old Age
A quarter of Japanese are over 65. A look at how the country is supporting its aging population: In 1990, Japan introduced the “Gold Plan”, expanding long-term care services. Ten years later, it started to worry about how to pay for it, and imposed mandatory insurance for long-term care. All those over 40 are obliged […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How Japan Prepared to Care for Its Rapidly Aging Population
As far back as the early 1960s, the government became aware of the imminent ageing problem and began to establish nursing homes and home helpers. In the 1970s, benefits for retirees were more than doubled and a system of virtually free healthcare for older people was established. In 1990, Japan introduced the “Gold Plan”, expanding […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Path to Pearl Harbor
How Japan found itself on the brink of war in December 1941: By the mid–1930s, much of northern China was essentially under Japanese influence. Then, on July 7, 1937, a small-scale clash between local Chinese and Japanese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge in Wanping, a small village outside Beijing, escalated. The Japanese prime minister, […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Hokkaido, Japan: The Land of Milk and Uni
To Hokkaido, In Search of the Uni Grail: For the past decade, I have sought out sea urchin like a zombified bipedal sea otter. I have eaten giant red urchins—uni, in sushi-speak—alive and wiggling in slow motion from the dock in Santa Barbara, California, and I’ve slurped from split shells in the street markets of […]
Posted inNonfiction
The Cold Rim of the World
The rise and fall of Pyramiden, a Russian mining town located in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Top 5
Longreads Best of 2014: Here Are All of Our No. 1 Story Picks from This Year
All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2014. To get you ready, here’s a list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email. If you like these, you can sign up to receive our free weekly email every Friday. * * * I Smoked Pot with […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Supernatural Sightings By Japanese Tsunami Survivors
Haltingly, apologetically, then with increasing fluency, the survivors spoke of the terror of the wave, the pain of bereavement and their fears for the future. They also talked about encounters with the supernatural. They described sightings of ghostly strangers, friends and neighbours, and dead loved ones. They reported hauntings at home, at work, in offices […]
