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 Japan before the internet, before a thousand Instagram accounts could beam the sun-drenched aesthetic of Venice Beach skate culture directly into a teenager’s bedroom in suburban Tokyo. Picture the mid-1970s. The country was in...

The first time you see it, you’ll probably do a double-take. Strolling down a Japanese street, you peer into a restaurant window, and there it is: a perfect, glistening bowl of ramen, its broth seemingly frozen mid-ripple. A plate of gyo...

You see them everywhere. Clustered outside a sleepy neighborhood candy shop, standing in silent, colorful ranks in the echoing halls of an arcade, or packed floor-to-ceiling in a dedicated subterranean temple of plastic in Akihabara. The...

To an outsider, it might look like just another photo booth, maybe one on a heavy dose of digital steroids. You see them tucked away in the glowing, cacophonous temples of modern leisure known as game centers, or occupying entire floors ...

Imagine this. You’re on a third date, and it’s going impossibly well. The conversation flows, effortless and engaging. The person across the table isn’t just attractive; they’re witty, they’re kind, they get your obscure references. A wa...

You asked me why on earth someone would go camping by themselves. It’s a fair question, especially from a Western perspective where camping is almost synonymous with a car full of friends, a cooler packed for a dozen people, and someone ...

If you’ve spent any time looking at modern Japanese pop culture, you’ve probably seen the signs. Maybe it was a person on the train whose handbag was so completely covered in keychains of a single anime character that you couldn’t see th...

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 ...

I’ll never forget my first encounter with the phenomenon. I was wandering through a covered shopping arcade in a small Japanese city, the sound of a gentle rain drumming on the translucent roof. Drawn in by a warm, inviting glow, I press...

You asked me what the deal is with those immersive digital art museums you keep seeing pop up from Tokyo. You know the ones—videos of people wandering through shimmering crystal forests, wading knee-deep in projections of koi fish, or st...

Someone asked me the other day what the most “Japanese” thing they could do in Tokyo was. They were expecting, I think, a temple, a museum, or some elaborate tea ceremony. My answer surprised them. I told them to find a small, old coffee...