Tim Patrick's Blog

If you have spent any length of time in Japan, you have encountered name stamps, those handheld seals used to mark documents. Embossing a bit of salmon-colored ink using one of these personal or corporate sticks says to the world, “Hear ye, hear ye, let it be forever known that I do hereby extend my approval and authority over the content and matters indicated in this manuscript.”(9 more paragraphs)

Japan’s identity as a culture and a society is unique in this world, thanks in part to its remote island location. When combined with the seventeenth-century policy of sakoku, which officially closed off the nation to foreigners for more than two centuries, Japan had a lot of time to hone its self-identity. Its physical separation from the world allowed it to establish a system of norms, customs, and expectations that make it a distinctive place to visit and live.(9 more paragraphs)

Cheese tastes great in a wide variety of foods. But did you know it also works with immigration policies? Well, it does, thanks to that modern Japanese preparation known as “cheese-in” (チーズイン). You might think it is something complicated, but far from it. Simply take a favorite food—or immigration standard—and stuff it with cheese. Voilà!(8 more paragraphs)

Japan’s government is famously bureaucratic, to the point where some commentators claim that the bureaucrats, and not the legislators, control everything. The system generates a lot of paperwork, and yet these endless forms provide a modicum of consistency. As long as everyone going into a process understands the documented procedures and follows them, things are supposed to go smoothly.(9 more paragraphs)

A few weeks ago, I had a chance to visit Hiroshima, my first trip to that sprawling port city in Western Japan. As I gazed at a cloudbank descending over Mount Fuji from my bullet train seat on the ride down, my thoughts wandered to the darkness of war that culminated in the destruction of that city by an atomic bomb almost eight decades ago. The focus of my trip would, of course, be the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where I would be overwhelmed with the misery and anguish of what transpired in those fateful moments at the end of World War II, and the pain and suffering that persisted in the years that followed.(6 more paragraphs)

Someone asked me a few days ago what my secret is for learning Japanese. Obviously, this conversation took place in English. If we had been communicating in Japanese, he would have known the futility in asking such a question of me. But ask he did, and it gave me a chance to weigh the various tools I have used to improve my language skills, especially in reading Japanese texts. I’m one of those “Try Everything” types, so I’ve encountered more than my share of unsuccessful methods. But a few tools have risen to the occasion and brought consistent, albeit sometimes slow, results. I present three of them here for your edification or bemusement.(13 more paragraphs)

This week, the entertainment behemoth Johnny and Associates will change its name to “Smile-Up.” If you haven’t been following the news, the talent agency founded back in the 1960s has been mired in scandal, stemming from accusations of abuse logged against its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, by young male entertainers under his charge. With victims numbering in the hundreds, the “Johnny” name has become tainted, and the group’s leadership team opted to replace its founder’s name with something else.(10 more paragraphs)

I don’t know about you, but I like sleeping at night. That’s why I try to avoid caffeine in the afternoons or evenings. This was relatively easy to do back in the United States, where every diner had a fresh orange-capped pot of decaf ready to pour into your mug. But here in Japan, it’s not that straightforward.(6 more paragraphs)

When you move to Japan, one of the first things you realize is how woefully unprepared you are for the experience. Naturally, there’s the language to deal with, its never-ending foreign words and phrases coming at you from all directions. Then there’s that “reading the air” thing, the expectation that you are supposed to understand instinctively what is going on with those around you, which you don’t.(12 more paragraphs)

The nations of the world recently have been behaving like a bunch of cranky kids, refusing to play well together despite having ample toys. Consider the United States, scribbling on everyone else’s coloring books with its box of sixty-four racial and sexual-minority crayons. Then there’s the Russian kid who lives in a palace and even has his own pony, but keeps throwing rocks at the Ukrainian family that lives next door. And who can forget North Korea, playing with a science kit in the corner and biting anyone who tries to take a look?(11 more paragraphs)