Articles
October 2, 2013
Sixty Years of Journal-Keeping
By Donald Richie
A journal is a personal record of occurrences, experiences, and reflections that is kept on a regular basis. “A regular basis” is the operative part of that definition. It’s a diary. And people have kept them over the centuries, for all sorts of reasons: as an aide-memoire, as a kind of a daybook, or as a companion. No matter how you... more
March 5, 2013
Judith Clancy and the Kyoto Machiya Restaurant Guide
Judith Clancy at home in her remodeled machiya-style house (click to enlarge)
Long-time Kyoto resident Judith Clancy answers questions about the ups and downs of publishing her go-to guide for savoring the distinctive culture of Kyoto, and what she learned from the process. Her publisher, Stone Bridge Press owner Peter Goodman, tells the... more
February 18, 2013
Good Farm Food: Nancy Singleton Hachisu Cooks for SWET
“I communicate through food,” said Nancy Singleton Hachisu, so she brought her food from the countryside of Saitama prefecture to the kitchen-equipped meeting room of the Wesley Center in Minami Aoyama and cooked for 31 SWET members and their friends on a cold late-January Friday night.
Sunny-yellow “soy sauce marinated eggs” and tasty,... more
January 4, 2013
Making a Good-Looking Book about Good Design
A well-designed object about Japan’s recent, well-designed objects, Naomi Pollock’s Made in Japan: 100 New Products was released in September 2012 by Merrell Publishers in the U.K. and is now readily available in Japan. On October 16, 2012, architect-turned-writer spoke to SWET about her new book. Her remarks about the making of Made in... more
May 31, 2011
A Writer’s Look at the iPad (2011)
by Lem Fugitt
Lem Fugitt is a Tokyo-based geek-about-town, using his experience in technology and business to write regularly on items of technical interest. He writes here about his recent conversion to a new way of putting thoughts into written words.
If anyone had asked me back in March 2010 if there was anything I really wanted or... more
April 17, 2011
How the Heck Do You Write about Japan?
by Alice Gordenker
Journalist Alice Gordenker spoke to SWET on September 16, 2010 in Tokyo, providing a behind-the-scenes account of how she crafts her popular “So, What the Heck Is That?” column for the Japan Times. In this monthly column, in its seventh year as of this writing, Gordenker has achieved a balance of humor and respect in meticulously researched yet... more