Sep 13, 2013

Now that Tokyo has been awarded the 2020 Summer Olympics the city is abuzz with excitement. Many places are celebrating by lighting up with the colors of the Olympic rings. The Rainbow Bridge, spanning Tokyo Bay, is no different. Whenever there’s an important event the bridge is set aglow in colored lights. Obviously being chosen to host the Summer...

Jul 8, 2013

How do you deal with the scorching heat of summer? Surrounding oneself with cool-looking items to make a place look cooler and thus feel cooler, is a common practice around the world during summer. Japan is no exception. Some of the most popular traditional summer items—used long before the air conditioner was invented—are furin (wind chimes), sudare...

Jan 4, 2013

Happy New Year! Now that the holiday madness is over… I have the next holiday in mind. Haha, just kidding, because Valentine’s Day isn’t a holiday at all, just another day the card and chocolate companies made up in order for us to spend our money. Having said that, I’m thinking that this year I won’t be giving “edible”...

Dec 12, 2012

An acquaintance of mine who has been in Tokyo for a few months read my previous article on job hunting in Ginza, and asked me what it was that I liked so much about the place. Isn’t the entire district a showroom for high fashion and haute couture from abroad? (Continued after the Japanese...

Dec 4, 2012

Note: The other day the local TV station did a feature on this year’s job hunting college students. Seeing the young people’s plain dark suits and faces—full of hope and uncertainty, fear and anxiety—reminded me of long ago, when I was among them. I wrote this article in retrospect, interspersing the text with photos of Ginza, Tokyo where the...

Oct 3, 2012

The Oktoberfest has come to town! Yey! Several of these are held around Japan in October: the one in Yokohama is the nicest of them all 🙂 I say this because the venue is at the Yokohama Akarenga-soko, red-bricked warehouses turned event complex. These are historical buildings completed during the turn of the 20th century. What could be a more appropriate...