Amelia Brown– Author –

In Australia, where I grew up, after-school activities were a pleasant supplement to the main event of education. You had soccer practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays, maybe a piano lesson on Wednesdays. Weekends were largely your own. It w...

When you think of a dedicated fan, what comes to mind? Maybe it’s a teenager with posters plastered on their bedroom walls, or sports fans painting their faces in team colors. In the West, we call it fandom, a hobby, maybe even a guilty ...

If you spend enough time in Japan, you’ll eventually have an encounter that leaves you utterly bewildered. It might be in a business meeting, where your Japanese colleagues nod enthusiastically at your proposal, showering it with praise,...

If you ask most people to picture a typical Japanese breakfast, they’ll probably describe a beautiful, intricate spread: a piece of grilled fish, a bowl of steaming rice, miso soup, pickles, and perhaps a block of tofu or some natto. And...

If you spend enough time in Japan, especially outside the tourist-heavy centers of Tokyo or Kyoto, you’ll eventually hear it. It might be during a sweltering August morning, drifting through an open window from a nearby park. Or perhaps ...

Walk down almost any commercial street in Japan, from a bustling Tokyo shotengai to a quiet suburban station front, and you’ll encounter it. Rows of glistening ramen, with impossibly perfect soft-boiled eggs suspended in a faux-pork brot...

I remember my first few months living in Japan, standing baffled in the fruit and vegetable aisle of a local supermarket. Back home in Australia, the produce section is a vast, unchanging landscape. You want strawberries in July? You can...

Before I lived in Japan, I never gave much thought to an entryway. It was just the bit of floor inside the front door. It’s where you’d find a crumpled takeaway menu, a stray dog lead, a pair of boots you meant to clean last autumn, and ...

You've probably seen pictures of them, even if you didn't know what you were looking at. A majestic, temple-like roofline tucked between modern apartment buildings. A plume of steam escaping from a high window on a cold night. The simple...

Walk down almost any bustling street in Japan, from a high-end Tokyo department store to a sleepy neighbourhood shopping arcade, and you’ll eventually be stopped in your tracks by a window display of food so perfect, so vibrant, it looks...

I once stood on a perfectly ordinary bridge in a quiet corner of Tokyo, watching a young man spend a full ten minutes photographing a specific metal railing. He wasn't a surveyor or an engineer. He held his smartphone in one hand and a l...

I still remember the meeting with painful clarity. It was early in my career in Tokyo, and I was proud of a proposal I’d spent weeks developing. I presented it to my boss, a kindly, silver-haired man named Tanaka-san. He listened patient...