～Take a slow train ride. There is impressive mountain and forest scenery even within Tokyo itself.～ Bookmark is a JAPAN Forward feature that gives you...
Shortly before the Toshimaen amusement park in Tokyo closed on August 31, Motoko Rich expressed an interest in the closing on Twitter. Since I myself...
The COVID-19 epidemic has nearly eliminated foreign tourists from Japan. While this means economic loss for tourism oriented businesses and their workers, it also means...
On Monday, August 31, Toshimaen, a “retro amusement park” in Tokyo, ended 94 years of operation. A large portion of the site will...
After more than a decade of creeping up from a historical low of 1.26 in 2005, the Japanese fertility rate has once again started declining....
On July 5, Yuriko Koike, the first female governor of Tokyo, won re-election by a wide margin. As widely reported, she received 3,661,371 votes, compared...
In the two decades I taught my course “Japan in the Foreign Imagination” at Keio and other Japanese universities, I came to stress that most...
Spring in Japan is usually a season for flower viewing. It’s a seasonal activity that attracts Japanese, foreign residents, and tourists to well-known sites for...
In 1991, Takashi Uemura wrote an article based on a recording that was made by the first of the “comfort women” to go public, Kim...
Going, Going, Ghosn Early this morning Japanese media, relying on foreign news stories, began reporting that Carlos Ghosn was in Lebanon - seemingly in...
Shinrin Koen — “Forest and Woods Park” — is unusual among the many parks in Japan in that it is directly operated by the...
(First of Two Parts) The Kanto area, including Tokyo and Yokohama, experienced one of the strongest typhoons on record in mid-October 2019. Foreign press...
