The booming noise coming up from the basement of the British School in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, is a more visceral version of the magic flute: It's just impossible to resist its charm. You follow the deep, thumping beat down a flight of stairs and ...
The Japanese publishing industry is facing a historic crisis, with total sales now only two-thirds of that in 1997 and hundreds of bookstores nationwide shutting down every year. The English-language market appears to have been particularly affected by this negative trend: Not only a number ...
According to Japanese popular wisdom, no matter how small your project or enterprise is, if it's really good people will eventually take notice. This seems to be especially true for anything food-related: In a country in which every conversation seems to lead to food talk, ...
Film buffs may know American Don Morton for the reviews he writes for Metropolis magazine. During a recent interview in his apartment, though, he mostly talked about bicycles. In fact the 67-year-old native of San Francisco is the founder of the Tokyo-based Half-Fast cycling ...
Ask Alana and Michel Bonzi where they are from and their first answer is they are citizens of the world. Married 14 years, their relationship has spanned four countries and three languages on three different continents. Alana, 46, is a university lecturer, writer and business consultant. ...
The tiny Amnesty International Japan headquarters is hidden on the fourth floor of a nondescript building in a dull business district not far from Ochanomizu, in central Tokyo. You would think they should at least fly their bright yellow banner from their windows to advertise ...
In few countries are the most vital political, economic and cultural activities as geographically concentrated as in Japan. All the main institutions can be found in Tokyo — one can only shudder to think what will happen not only to this city, but to ...
Those members of the expat community in Japan who are addicted to their weekly or monthly fix of English-language magazines will have surely noticed all the changes going on lately. These are troubled and exciting times and, just as it has in the past, ...
Tales of expat life in Japan all too often get blown out of proportion and quickly become picaresque adventures that little resemble real life. For some reason, many writers can't resist the temptation to exaggerate things. In their stories — be them fiction or memoir ...
Signs and symbols play an ever-growing role in our increasingly complex society. In this respect, Japan — the "empire of signs," as French semiologist Roland Barthes called it back in 1970 — strikes and confounds the foreign visitor with a vast array of alphabets, ...
