Tokyo | Tokyo
May.09.2011
Two months have passed since the massive 9.0 earthquake struck Japan, triggering a tsunami and nuclear disaster. Last Saturday, I attended an anti-nuclear rally in Tokyo, and wrote about my experience. Gina Misiroglu of Redroom helped me place the story in The Huffington Post--a huge thanks to Gina...
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Apr.06.2011
2:46pm, March 11, 2011. Tokyo, Japan.
I’d just finished a yoga class at my studio in downtown Tokyo and walked down the street to have lunch at Ootoya, a favorite cafe. I’d just placed my order when the building started to shake. I was on the second floor of a five-story concrete building built...
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Mar.30.2011
In Japan’s most popular cultural genres known as manga (comic books) and anime (animation films and series), there’s a recurrent theme in which the country is routinely devastated.
Tokyo, home to more than 30 million people, is destroyed so often in the Japanese collective imagination there’s an...
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Mar.15.2011
“… the March 11, 2011 9.0 earthquake, tsunami, and resulting nuclear disaster becomes an epic devastation …”
Today, in light of recent devastation in Asia, I am changing my weekly post order to reflect on what is happening in Japan. I lived in Tokyo for three months in 1990, and I grieve for the...
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Mar.11.2010
As I trundle around the Levant researching my Palestinian crime novels, I love to come upon a stinking squatting-toilet, its evacuation hole bubbling with dark, sinister turds and the air strong with the scent of barely digested, unhygienically prepared lamb kebab. I adore such a khazi on sight,...
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Mar.08.2010
Ergh, it's been a tad too long since I've blogged anything on good ol' Red Room, so I'm crawling out from under my termite-infested floorboards to ring my own bell. Well, not really just my bell, but the communal bell that belongs to Peter I. Chang, John Convertino, and me--and which goes...
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Oct.24.2009
The Kiyora (which translates to clean and pure) might just be the showstopper when it is revealed to the press on October 21. Mazda has just released new photos and details of the Kiyora to a crowd of mixed reactions. The Japanese Anime styling seems to provoke love-hate emotions from the Mazda...
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Apr.16.2009
According to the Global Post, cat cafes are all the rage in Tokyo. Japanese love their nekos (cats) and cafes with names like Nekorobi, Cat Cafe Rien, Calico, and Cateriam are springing up all over. They’re perfect if you work long hours, have to be away a lot on business or live in an...
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