japanamerica

This August, we've resumed my monthly series, "Letters from Tokyo," with the Japan Society of Boston after a 6-month personal hiatus. Tokyo August 2022 saw record-breaking heat and Covid numbers and almost zero tourists. The city feels muted and a bit fatigued. But it's also calming and a lot less expensive than the US cities I've recently been in, and Tokyo's food, design and infrastructure remain unparalleled. Also, as you can hear for yourself in my closing video shot at the lovely Kumano Shrine in Jiyugaoka, the semi/cicadas are sizzling at full tilt. Roland Kelts' Letters from Tokyo, August 2022: Hot and Tired Town In recent years I’ve spent late-July and August elsewhere, usually at US retreats in New York and New England, abandoning Japan to escape the heat. But this year everything is different. I broke my shoulder in the spring and got sidelined for a while, albeit in a friend’s beautiful house in storybook Carmel, a town in north central Califor

I spoke to the BBC about the Japanese government's new campaign contest to get young people to drink more alcohol (!)—and the death of pioneering fashion designer Hanae Mori. I did not try to connect the two. Audio's online here .  "Japan's young adults are a sober bunch - something authorities are hoping to change with a new campaign. The younger generation drinks less alcohol than their parents - a move that has hit taxes from beverages like sake (rice wine). So the national tax agency has stepped in with a national competition to come up with ideas to reverse the trend. The 'Sake Viva!' campaign hopes to come up with a plan to make drinking more attractive - and boost the industry. The contest asks 20 to 39-year-olds to share their business ideas to kick-start demand among their peers - whether it's for Japanese sake, shochu, whiskey, beer or wine. The group running the competition for the tax authority says new habits - partly formed during the Covid pa

Hello everyone, I’m Fintan. I’m a high schooler in NYC and Roland was nice enough to let me make a contribution to the blog! This is a big topic and will take more than one posting, so I look forward to sharing more of my thoughts in future posts. Anime and Manga have become increasingly popular in recent years, predominantly outside of Japan. From the perspective of an American teenager, I want to write about what I think it is that makes the medium so widely consumed.  To me, the vast majority of American media feels generic and lacks depth. The movies we see in theaters follow the same plot, as our standards for cinema hardly change. These movies seem to always lack the confidence to go outside of the invisible box they’re all made in.  It’s been a while since a movie came out that I genuinely considered a 10/10, and the most recent one I can think of is Parasite, which originates from Korea, from filmmaker Bong Joon Ho. It addressed the social pyramid in an entirely new way, with e