People have a habit of vanishing in Japan---even hundreds of years ago, it happened often enough that myths were created to explain these sudden disappearances. 神隠し (kamikakushi)--to be hidden by…

As you read this, you may be asking yourself why I am so fascinated by these cars with three cylinders and a two-cycle engine. Because the earth itself may be…

Clients say they want to know, but they don't They want you to tell them what they want to hear But that's not the job My job is to deliver…

Life seems to be going incredibly well for them until Daisuke is killed in an accident. At the one-year memorial, his estranged older brother turns up from Gunma prefecture, clear…

My first encounter with the ‘yakuza’ or the crooks and gangsters of Japan’s underworld, happened when I was 14 years old, on my way home from cram school. It was…

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are over but they may leave a lasting legacy in Japan: the deadly COVID19 Lambda variant; it first arrived on July 20th, when a woman in…

So ashamed. I feel good that I'm no longer performing at the Tokyo Olympic Opening Ceremony...Though I’ve been contributing to the Japanese music industry since 1995...They completely violate the Olympic…

Ah, I didn't know about this skit. This is no good. It's like if you did a sketch where the joke was the atomic bombings of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, or…

Yesterday, June 23rd, marked one month before the opening of the “cursed” Tokyo 2020 Olympics and hundreds of residents marked the occasion by holding a protest in front of the…

Suicides in Japan are like wildfires in California: tragic, inevitable and seemingly unsolvable. According to the National Police Agency, 1805 people killed themselves in September and suicides amongst women were…