Culture & Mindset– category –

You’ve seen it, even if you don’t know its name. It’s the backdrop to countless classic films and the entire world of Studio Ghibli’s My Neighbor Totoro. It’s a gentle, rolling landscape of terraced rice paddies climbing a hillside, a da...

You asked me why Japanese performance cars, the ones that have become legends, feel so different from their American or European counterparts. It’s a great question, because the answer isn’t found in a spec sheet or a horsepower graph. Y...

So, you’ve landed a job in Japan. You’re navigating the complex honorifics, mastering the art of the business card exchange, and generally feeling like you’re getting the hang of things. Then the email arrives. It’s an invitation, but it...

You see it everywhere in Japan, once you know what to look for. Tucked away in a quiet Kyoto neighborhood, a massive, gnarled camphor tree, centuries old, is wrapped in a thick, braided straw rope. In a forest on a remote peninsula, a cl...

You’ve probably heard the terms senpai and kohai. If you’ve watched any anime or Japanese dramas, you’ve seen it in action: the nervous junior (kohai) bowing deeply to a confident upperclassman (senpai), the older employee taking the you...

You see them sometimes in the quiet corners of temple grounds, away from the main crush of tourists and worshipers. Someone will be standing before a small, wood-framed window, clutching a brightly colored, accordion-fold book. They slid...

Picture a Tokyo office building at nine o'clock on a Tuesday night. Through the vast glass windows, you can see rows of desks, most still occupied. The glow of monitors illuminates faces locked in concentration. But if you look closer, y...

You’ve seen the images, I’m sure. Legions of men in identical dark suits, pouring out of train stations like a river of conformity, marching toward the gleaming towers of Marunouchi. This is the classic picture of corporate Japan, the er...

You’ve probably seen them, even if you didn’t know their name. A perfect, fuzzy green sphere of moss, cradling a plant whose roots are mysteriously contained within. Sometimes they sit on a simple ceramic dish. Other times they hang in t...

We’re all feeling it. That low-grade hum of exhaustion that has nothing to do with physical labor and everything to do with the thousand tiny notifications, the endless scroll, the tyranny of the always-on inbox. It’s the signature ailme...

Someone asks you to picture Japan, and your mind likely conjures up a familiar highlight reel: the electric scramble of Shibuya Crossing, the serene bamboo groves of Arashiyama, the neon-drenched alleys of Shinjuku. It’s a vision of inte...

There’s a word in Japanese that doesn’t have a clean English equivalent. It’s a term born from a specific kind of tragedy, a word that sits heavy in the air when spoken. The word is karōshi. It translates, quite literally, to “death from...