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 “cheese-in” (チーズイン). You might think...
Japan’s government is famously bureaucratic, to the point where some commentators claim that the bureaucrats, and not the legislators, control everything. The system generates a lot of paperwork, and yet these endless...
Someone asked me a few days ago what my secret is for learning Japanese. Obviously, this conversation took place in English. If we had been communicating in Japanese, he would have known the futility in asking such a...
I don’t know about you, but I like sleeping at night. That’s why I try to avoid caffeine in the afternoons or evenings. This was relatively easy to do back in the United States, where every diner had a fresh orange...
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 foreign words and phrases coming at you...
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 those in their twenties and...
There is a very amusing skit by the late Japanese comedian Shimura Ken where he plays a befuddled high school English teacher assigned to a class full of native English speakers. When these clearly American students...
I moved to Japan in part to get away from all the politics. America, in its modern incarnation, is politics on steroids. The old adage, “All politics is local,” was once linked primarily to elections, a reminder to...
Japan is great at standardizing things. Whether it is Just-In-Time manufacturing processes in an automobile factory or the shuffling of paperwork at city hall, organizations in Japan are adept at creating and adhering...
You history buffs out there might recall that the mid-1940s was a busy time for Japan. With the empire’s defeat at the end of World War II, the Allied victors were in a position to make sweeping changes to the country’s...
Tim Odagiri
Harold Archer