Hey Mr. DJ

I was reminded this week of an old ambition of mine – I used to want to be a radio DJ. Not one of the morning talk show DJs or even an afternoon let-me-solve-your-problems DJ, but a late-night, slow-jams-playing, small-audience-listening DJ. The type of DJ not hired for their voice, celebrity appeal or wittiness, but [...]

O-bon Odori

Ten years ago this week I was in the neighborhoods of Osaka doing the O-bon odori, the dance performed at the annual Japanese festival of the dead. All across Japan, from the end of July to early August, neighbors and families gather to dance the night away and welcome the souls of their ancestors back [...]

The Timepiece as Art

Since I have been periodically traveling to Switzerland for work the past many months I have become fascinated with watches. Switzerland is the gold standard for watchmaking, with Japan a distant second. No other country has a monopoly on displaying time like Switzerland. But it is not just my fascination with knowing what time it [...]

A Real Family Man

I am now the proud owner of a Toyota Sienna. I looked at various minivans and midsize SUVs over the past several weeks, but in the end it came down to a Toyota Sienna or a Honda Odyssey. And how could we go wrong with either? Each was rated almost identically and there are tons [...]

It’s Automatic

The other night I heard a song that took me back ten years. The song is “Automatic” by Utada Hikaru and it is legendary in Japan. You see, ten years ago, in 1999, I was living in Sakai, Japan, near Osaka. We had just exited a long, cold winter and spring had finally come. The [...]

The Next Ten Years

It’s hard to believe that I have been studying Japanese for ten years. But it’s true. As of a few days ago I have been intensely trying to learn the Japanese language for the past ten years. But only two of the past ten years have been spent in Japan. With that being the case, [...]

Chasing Japan

For three years in law school I toyed with the idea of spending one semester in Tokyo at the Temple Japan Law Program, a specialized study abroad program through Temple University in Philadelphia. I requested the application more than once. I personally reached out to the director of the program and made sure I met [...]

A Shift Eastward

I read this morning that the New York metropolitan area, according to 2007 statistics, contains approximately 19 million people. This is far short of the 35.7 million people Tokyo now is estimated to encompass, but is significant nonetheless because it represents a growing population in the New York area. Yet, numbers can be deceiving. Sure, [...]

Cherry Blossom Reminisces

The first week of April in Japan is a big deal. Millions of people flock outside to the warming weather for a stroll or to enjoy a picnic lunch while under the pinkish-glow of the sakura, or cherry blossoms. Hanami, or flower watching, is a national pastime in Japan and provides a boost to the [...]

Rural Culture

If I had to choose between the two, I am definitely a city person over a country person. I have never had much of a desire to live in the more rural areas of the United States. I do not enjoy being in nature as much as some people and would prefer to be in [...]

Sakura Sensei

We were without cable television for the first year and a half that we lived in New York. I don’t recommend it. We picked up very few channels with the bunny-ears antenna that we had and what we could watch was not clear. The whole experience was far from the HDTV viewing pleasure that I [...]

Snow Falling

As I sit in my office on the 32nd floor and look out at the snow that has begun to fall over Manhattan I remember back to a train ride I had over seven years ago. It was February of 2000, Y2K had proven to be no big deal and I was in the mountains [...]

Japanese Class, Day One

I attended my first Keizai and Business Japanese class at the Japan Society the other day, as mentioned in my previous post. For the first time in a long time, I felt in over my head with Japanese. And it wasn’t that I couldn’t understand what was going on. I could. I just couldn’t read the article [...]

The Japan Society, Round Three

Tonight I begin my Japanese class for this fall semester. This is the third class I have enrolled in at the Japan Society in New York. I have been impressed with the classes so far and the caliber of the professors. The two previous classes I have taken have been with the same professor, Aizawa Sensei. [...]

Hashimoto Ni Mei Sama . . .

Of all of the summer jobs I had the best was during the summer of 2001. As if being a college student in Hawaii, as I was at that time, was not good enough, I had a job that many people could only dream of in college. I worked for the largest paid-tourist attraction in the [...]

Japan On My Mind

It is often said that to find what will be satisfying to you as a career, think about how you spend your free time. In doing so, I found that much of my free time – from the books I read to the news I follow to sometimes even the music I listen to – [...]

Seven Years and Counting

It was exactly seven years ago today that I came back from Japan. I have yet to return to the country that I called home for two years, although I tell myself that I will with each new year. The two years that I spent in Kansai now seem like a dream. Yet, I remember them well. I [...]

Journals

I finished reading a book yesterday by Donald Richie titled The Japan Journals. The book covered the almost sixty years that Richie lived in Japan, from 1947 to 2004, and his thoughts, impressions, adventures and experiences in the country as it transformed itself into a global powerhouse. What struck me, however, was the level of detail [...]

Japanese-Brazilians

What many people do not know is that Brazil has the largest Japanese population of any country outside of Japan. In the first few decades of the twentieth century, tens of thousands of Japanese immigrated to Brazil with the hopes of saving money by working in agriculture near Sao Paulo. Japanese schools and communities were established throughout [...]

J-Pop

Japanese pop, or J-Pop, is still largely unheard of in the United States, yet it reminds me of another time and place in my life. When I turn it on, I am whisked away to a Lawson’s, Family Mart, 7-11 (which many people don’t realize is now a Japanese company) or any one of the many convenience [...]

Nichibei Exchange

Since I left Japan almost seven years ago I have been fortunate to live in areas where there are large amounts of Japanese. Last September I discovered a group in New York that has been meeting for over twenty years now. The group, called The Nichibei Exchange (Japan-U.S. Exchange), meets about once a month (or [...]

Nihongo

I spoke with a friend the other night that is contemplating going back to Japan. He spent a year there on the JET Programme and enjoyed it up until he was hit by a car while riding his bike. After his accident, the time couldn’t go by fast enough for him to get back to the [...]

To Japan and Back

Last week I had lunch with a friend whose ideas got me thinking. It has been over six years since I have been in Japan, and there has hardly been a week (if not day) that has gone by without me thinking about someone I met, an experience I had, or a feeling I felt [...]