When I look back at Tokyo 2020 — hard to believe it was a full calendar year ago — I’m consistently drawn to the Olympig. A piece of drawing-board conception so tone…

When you live in a democracy, it’s nice to believe there’s a free and independent press, full transparency of media information dissemination and a hard-boiled sense of journalistic integrity pervading the news…

Until a few days ago, it seemed genteel, quaint even, that Japanese politicians could give campaign speeches on street corners and freely shake the hands of passersby. That Japan was so safe…

I spent most of my first morning on the island of Dejima trying to sober up. A foolhardy endeavor when cloaked in the muggy sweat of the Nagasaki spring and surrounded by…

I’m not sure I would like to go to North Korea. Not only because I’d be wandering around ogling at the forceful subjugation of millions of innocent civilians like some sadistic voyeur,…

Having spent most of 2022 in the UK – where the current attitude towards Covid is along the lines of “What virus?” – I have found it particularly difficult to reacclimatize to…

One day I was standing outside my local ward office staring forlornly into the distance, the way people are wont to do when they undergo stress-inducing encounters with Japanese bureaucracy, when an…

It’s no secret that every startup hub wants to be the Silicon Valley of whatever country they’re based in. And Fukuoka, Kyushu’s largest city with 1.5 million residents, is one of Japan’s…