It wasn’t too long ago that Tokyo was considered the most expensive city in the world. Not to mention that Japan as a whole was very expensive as well. Even today, that (mis)conception is still quite prevalent. The … [Read more...]
Koichi recently wrote an article entitled “Why Japanese Education Succeeds: Amae, Stress and Perseverence - this article is meant to be a rejoinder exploring not really the successes of Japanese education (which there are … [Read more...]
Many of you probably recognize Narita Airport as your gateway to Tokyo and wider Japan. And, if you’re one of the 35,379,408 passengers who used Narita last year, you were able to experience this airport in its full … [Read more...]
This article first appeared in a truncated version at on the Komaba Times Website, the blog for the Journalistic Writing class at the University of Tokyo -- Anyone living in Japan can tell you that the words … [Read more...]
Some of you may have heard of the "many differences" between the Kanto and Kansai regions in Japan. In Kanto you have the metropolis of Tokyo and the seaside city of Yokohama. In Kansai, you have the older culture of Nara … [Read more...]
Note: I’ll use “gaijin” for the majority of the article. Not in a derogatory sense (I’m a gaijin too) because it’s much cleaner than “foreign student”. And of course, to highlight that foreigners for the most part are … [Read more...]