Display problems? View this newsletter in your browser.Konnichiwa everybody,Earlier this month, Japan was delighted by the Oscar given to Tsuji Kazuhiro (辻一弘) and his colleagues. He won the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling for his work on the movie “Darkest Hour” and it’s the first time a Japanese artist won an award in this category. In […]
Category: Yuki’s Hot Picks
Happy New Year, Everybody! 明けましておめでとうございます！ 本年もどうぞよろしくお願いいたします。 I hope you all had great holidays and wish you the best for 2018. Since the 50’s, watching “Kouhaku uta gassen” (紅白歌合戦) is a New Year’s Eve (大晦日 – oomisoka) tradition for Japanese families. This annual music TV show features singers of all genres and generations competing against each other through the […]
Konnichiwa everybody, As some of my clients know already, I was in Tokyo last month for business. I had the chance to work with Airbnb to promote their new Experiences service: handcrafted activities designed and led by locals. Hired as a Japanese cultural expert, I helped them curate and co-host their promotional tour of Tokyo. I helped […]
Konnichiwa everybody, This month, Tokyo has had what we call a reika (冷夏 – cold summer). It rained for more than 20 days straight, a phenomenon we haven’t seen in 40 years.Due to the weather, farmers are preparing for a bad harvest this year. The cost of crop production will most likely increase, which will be a hardship for the whole country. August is a very important month in Japanese history (日本史 – nihonshi): on August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima (広島). And on August 9, 1945, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki (長崎). Japan announced the end of the Pacific War (also known as World War II) on August15, 1945 ( 終戦の日 – shuusen no hi). As a result, Japanese people are concerned about North Korea’s regular nuclear tests and the escalating provocations between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump. The recent missile that North Korea sent over Hokkaido (北海道) was widely reported on in the news and has been taken very seriously. The government activated the national warning system J-Alert and bullet trains were even temporarily stopped. On the brighter side, September in the Bay Area has a lot to offer culture-wise, with the upcoming J-Pop Summit and the Japanese movie film festival (映画祭 – eigasai) in San Francisco. They are not to be […]
Konnichiwa everybody, A few days ago I came upon numerous articles from Western media outlets that covered a Donald Trump interview where he said that the Japanese prime minister’s wife, Abe Akie (安倍 昭恵), did not speak a word of English. This news cycle went on to imply that she “may have pretended to not speak English […]
Konnichiwa everybody, As some of my students already know, I have begun offering travel curation services for Tokyo (東京), and was recently hired by an American company for a project in Japan. I flew to Tokyo in early June for a brief, busy trip, and although I could only be there for a few days, […]