The Tokyo English Life Line has been providing support and counseling services to Japan's international community for 40 years. Vickie Skorji, the new director of the Lifeline hot line service, has played a pivotal role in its activities.
How can writers make themselves heard in the age of blog and self-publishing saturation? Japan-based authors offer a diverse range of views
It's an all-too-familiar story: On the romantic front, foreign ladies living in Japan have it bad while the guys do unbelievably well. For every woman who complains about Japanese men's aloofness and lack of communication skills, there is a man who boasts about all ...
For foreigners who arrive in Japan with little knowledge or preparation, the first encounter with the local lingo can be brutal. In the past, for instance, newcomers would have taken the train from Narita airport to Tokyo or Shinjuku station and promptly run up ...
Demographic statistics released by the health and welfare ministry continue to paint a bleak future for Japan, whose population is forecast to decline steadily in coming decades unless measures are taken to reverse the birthrate decline. The number of babies born in 2011 was ...
While English-language magazines in Japan are fast becoming a species in danger of extinction, Europe is experiencing a renewed interest in this country thanks to a veteran French journalist who since 2010 has been publishing Zoom Japon (and its English version, Zoom Japan), a ...
Finding places in Tokyo can be complicated. All too often a simple address is not enough. That's why many people here look like treasure hunters roaming the streets armed with a map or its modern equivalent, the smartphone. While getting lost in the business district ...
Takeharu Watai has spent all of his two-decade career in video journalism as an independent. But he is conscious that public distrust of the mass media, particularly over its coverage of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the nation's nuclear energy policy, has grown so ...
THE WORLD'S BEST STREET FOOD: Where to Find It & How to Make it, Lonely Planet, 2012, 224 pp., $19.99 (paperback) One thing that every dedicated Japanese tourist will tell you is that you cannot really enjoy a trip abroad unless you eat your way ...
In 1965, Akira Kurosawa directed "Akahige" ("Red Beard"), the story of an Edo Period doctor who teaches his arrogant intern the importance of compassion, responsibility, and empathizing with his patients. Ophthalmologist Tadashi Hattori has seen this movie, but he insists that he was not ...
