Hiroshi Tanaka– Author –

If you spend any time traveling through the suburbs of a Japanese city, you’ll eventually see them. Rising from the landscape of tiled roofs and tangled telephone wires are clusters of uniform, concrete buildings, usually five stories hi...

You asked me what happened in the nineties after Japan’s famous economic bubble burst. Most people picture a dreary decade of corporate restructuring and lost confidence, the beginning of a long national hangover. And while that’s not wr...

Imagine a narrow, winding road snaking up a dark mountainside just outside a major Japanese city. It’s late, well past the hour of respectable errands. At the top, the road opens into a small parking area, a lookout point perched on the ...

You've probably seen the pictures: steam rising from a stone-lined pool, snow-dusted pines in the background, perhaps a macaque or two looking blissfully relaxed. This is the postcard image of the Japanese onsen, or hot spring. It’s an i...

So, you’ve heard about the gokon. On the surface, it sounds simple enough: a group of single men and a group of single women, usually three-on-three or four-on-four, meet up for dinner and drinks. It’s a group date, a casual mixer arrang...

So you’ve heard about the snow in Japan. Of course you have. The word 'Japow' has become a kind of holy grail for skiers and snowboarders around the world, whispered in chairlift lines from Whistler to Chamonix. It describes a meteorolog...

You’ve seen them, of course. Peer into the window of almost any casual restaurant in Japan, from a bustling ramen joint in Shinjuku to a sleepy kissaten in a regional town, and you’ll find them: glistening, impossibly perfect replicas of...

When you picture Japan, your mind probably jumps to the neon-drenched canyons of Shinjuku, the disciplined chaos of the Shibuya Scramble crossing, or perhaps a serene temple garden, meticulously raked and silent. You might think of cutti...