Japanese Culture
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Chanpon
Probably because many of my US-based friends are academics and technologists, many of them visit Tokyo as part of their professional circuit. I often get requests for recommendations for places to stay and visit while in Tokyo. Usually these requests are coming from busy people who are travelling primarily for business meetings or to give a talk, and might have one or two days free to explore the city. Over the years, I've composed many emails to my friends with somewhat lame attempts to recommend the best places to go.
There have been quite a few stories recently about a new Tokyo city ordinance that bans businesses from displaying animals after 8:00PM. Some pet stores operated well into the night, and many people complained about what they saw as cruelty to animals. Yoshida’s cat cafe in Ikebukuro, a busy commercial and commuter hub in Tokyo, keeps 13 cats in a carpeted room where they have the freedom to jump around and climb all over the large fake tree. “It is a huge blow to us cat cafes, and it’s nothing to do with protecting cats’ health,” said Yoshida, 32. “As you see, cats can walk and play freely. I ask customers not to touch them if they are sleeping.
Japan Probe
A four-part series on the famed Japanese female subculture and its the evolution from a summery look of rich delinquent high-schoolers to an extreme set of working class styles Introduction The Japanese understand their own history of street culture as a constant succession of youth “tribes” who dominate the landscape for a few years with a specific style and then disappear just as quickly as they arrived.
Néojaponisme
Hey guys! Guess what, I'm making a movie! We Are All Radioactive is an interactive, episodic documentary film project about surfers rebuilding northern Japan. I co-directed it with Jason Wishnow, who is the film director at TED . Sunday is the one-year anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake, and we really need to remind people of how people in Japan are still living with the aftermath + uncertainty about radiation every day.
TOKYOMANGO
AJATT: All Japanese All The Time
Since I was a kid, I’ve had an on-and-off, morbid, intellectual fascination with suicide. I can remember being about seven years old, and asking an adult, probably one of my sisters, something along the lines of: “is it possible to kill yourself?”, and she...
In November 1855, the Great Ansei Earthquake struck the city of Edo (now Tokyo), claiming 7,000 lives and inflicting widespread damage. Within days, a new type of color woodblock print known as namazu-e (lit. "catfish pictures") became popular among the residents of the shaken city.