You’ve survived the photo booth itself. The countdowns, the slightly awkward poses dictated by a cheerful cartoon voice, the flash that seems to temporarily rearrange your atoms. You and your friends stumble out of the curtained box, bli...

If you’ve spent any time in Japan, or even just watched a few Japanese films, you’ve witnessed the ritual. It’s a moment of pause, a quiet transition that happens every time someone enters a home. The door opens, but the person doesn’t j...

Step out of the train at Shin-Okubo Station, and the shift is immediate. You’re just one stop away from Shinjuku, the world's busiest transport hub and a monument to orderly urban chaos. But here, the air itself feels different. The poli...

You asked me why the basement of a Japanese department store is such a big deal. It’s a fair question. In most parts of the world, the basement is where you find storage, parking, or maybe a clearance section with questionable lighting. ...

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...

When you think of spring in Japan, your mind probably leaps to cherry blossoms. You picture seas of pale pink petals, picnics under blooming trees, and maybe a sakura-flavoured latte. It’s a beautiful, gentle, almost sweet image of the s...

Stand in one of Kyoto’s great gardens—say, the sublime grounds of the Shugaku-in Imperial Villa—and you’ll feel it. Beyond the meticulously placed rocks and carp-filled ponds, beyond the expertly pruned pines that seem to bow in welcome,...

You're driving down a street in a quiet Tokyo suburb, or maybe navigating the neon-canyon expressways of Osaka at night. Everything is as you’d expect: taxis, delivery vans, sensible family sedans. Then you see it. A flash of electric pi...

You asked me what it feels like to step into one of Japan’s old-school arcades, the ones tucked away in sleepy shotengai arcades or down the backstreets of Akihabara. It’s a great question, because the answer isn’t just about video games...

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 gleaming Tokyo shopping arcade to a sleepy provincial town’s covered shotengai, and you’ll eventually find yourself staring into a glass box of impossible food. A bowl of ramen, its...

Walk down almost any quiet side street in a Japanese city, past the gleaming convenience stores and minimalist boutiques, and you might see it: a doorway that seems to belong to another time. Perhaps there’s a sign with swirling, old-fas...