#expat-life

Thirteen years of collecting LINE accounts from strangers who never message again. A field report on the great tatemae friendship performance, and why I've finally stopped pretending.

Why does Japanese food culture treat British food like a war crime when nobody here has actually eaten any of it? A rant about the smuggest culinary inferiority complex on earth.

Japan's four seasons obsession is a national delusion dressed up as poetry. No, mate, you did not invent autumn. The rest of the planet also has weather.

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.

Japanese ambulance response times are the stuff of bureaucratic legend — and not in a good way. When the emergency services drive slower than the average granny on a mamachari, you start to wonder who exactly is in a hurry here.