Booking a Japanese doctor's appointment is impossible. Instead you take a paper ticket, lose a morning to the waiting room lottery, and pay across three separate queues to learn you have the cold you described on arrival.
The nihongo jouzu compliment lands the second any foreigner produces a single Japanese sound. Here is what thirteen years of being told your Japanese is very good after saying 'konnichiwa' actually does to a person.
You're having a perfectly decent conversation with a Japanese woman on a night out, and then he appears. The Japanese cockblock is real, it is systematic, and it deserves a proper autopsy.
Ten years of living here and I've made my peace with a lot. The queuing theatre. The plastic bags. The fax machines. But the indicator — the humble, legally mandated, two-second flick of the wrist — apparently remains optional.
Every typhoon in Japan gets a multi-day media build-up like a national emergency, then arrives in Tokyo as light fucking drizzle. A field report on the country's favourite ritual of collective weather panic.
The white knight of Japan: the foreigner who appears, sword drawn, the instant you say anything factually accurate yet negative about Japan. A field guide to the most insufferable expat archetype going.
There is exactly one Japanese vending machine near me that sells Dr Pepper. Was. There was exactly one. Now there are four rows of Coke and a hole in my soul the shape of a 500ml can.
The otsukaresama group bow is a Japanese workplace farewell ritual performed, for reasons known only to God and middle management, directly in front of the only ticket gate. Hundreds of people, one human dam of gratitude.
Half gaijin, half samurai, all out of patience. The fury is the bill the love has run up. Send us your worst day at the ward office. Read the Manifesto →