Motoyuki Shibata in Paper Sky magazine

Me and Motoyuki Shibata in Paper Sky.

Roland Kelts: When you’re traveling, are you able to translate and write as easily as you do at home in Japan?

Motoyuki Shibata: Oh, even better.

RK: How so?

MS: Well, let’s say I’m in a park, or in an open air café, and I’m translating something, and people are talking around me. In a Tokyo park, they would be speaking Japanese, so I would be catching all of their comments and that would interfere with my translation work. But if I’m overseas, I would be hearing English conversation, and if I don’t concentrate, I wouldn’t know what they were talking about. Just sounds—like nice background music.

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