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…

When regaling someone with a tale from your past, especially one told on countless occasions, how much of it do you embellish? Does it get better on each retelling? Do you present…

Shochu is often a curiosity to foreigners. A distilled spirit made from up to 53 government-approved crops in order to be honkaku (genuine), it gives rise to a diverse range of flavor…

Tokyo is undoubtedly a novelist’s city. Its patent eccentricity demands it play a role closer to a character than a setting, while its diverse neighborhoods – and the clerks, chefs, teens, salarymen,…