“What learning to flip shrimp tails and build onion volcanoes taught me about the gift of performance, and its emotional toll.”
Japanese culture
Japan’s Lonely Cherry Blossoms
Millions of people turn out to see Japan’s famous sakura blossoms. This year, Covid-19 kept the usual crowds at home, though the blossom makes a fitting metaphor for evanescence.
Japan: A Longform Reading List of Longform Writing
Armchair travel is more important than ever, now that pandemic has forced us to stay indoors. Reading can take you across the ocean.
Collecting Rare Sneakers from Japan
Japan began producing limited edition sneakers in the 1990s. Now a new global wave of sneaker enthusiasts have begun seeking its rarities.
Convenience Store Woman
If the convenience store and Japanese society are so similar, why can Keiko Furukura function in one and not the other?
Japan’s Vegetable-Eating Men
Recent cultural and policy shifts in Japan have made a previously hard-to-find species far more common: the stay-at-home dad.
Where Your Stuff Goes When You Lose It in Tokyo
If you lost your umbrella in Tokyo, don’t worry. It’s probably among the thousands stored inside the Metropolitan Police Department’s six-story lost and found center.
Themed for Success
At Eater, journalist Emily Yoshida hits some of Tokyo’s absurd, popular tourist attractions trying to understand specifically what themed-destinations offer and why they’re so popular.
The Forgotten History of Japanese-American Designers’ World War II Internment
Revisiting the link between detention and design history, 75 years after FDR’s executive order.
How the Blues Conquered Tokyo
I couldn’t quite figure out why Japanese listeners had come to appreciate and savor the blues in the way that they seemed to—lavishly, devotedly. Blues is still an outlier genre in Japan, but it’s revered, topical, present. I’d spent my first couple of days in Tokyo hungrily trawling the city’s many excellent record stores, marveling […]
