If you have spent any length of time in Japan, you have encountered name stamps, those handheld seals used to mark documents. Embossing a bit of salmon-colored ink using one .....
Japan’s identity as a culture and a society is unique in this world, thanks in part to its remote island location. When combined with the seventeenth-century policy of sakoku, which .....
Cheese tastes great in a wide variety of foods. But did you know it also works with immigration policies? Well, it does, thanks to that modern Japanese preparation known as .....
A few weeks ago, I had a chance to visit Hiroshima, my first trip to that sprawling port city in Western Japan. As I gazed at a cloudbank descending over .....
This week, the entertainment behemoth Johnny and Associates will change its name to “Smile-Up.” If you haven’t been following the news, the talent agency founded back in the 1960s has .....
When you move to Japan, one of the first things you realize is how woefully unprepared you are for the experience. Naturally, there’s the language to deal with, its never-ending .....
The nations of the world recently have been behaving like a bunch of cranky kids, refusing to play well together despite having ample toys. Consider the United States, scribbling on .....
Anyone who cares about Japan and its people knows that it is going through some demographic turbulence right now. A large baby-boom population entering its twilight years is clashing with .....
