Tokyo Times

Jan 16 2012 12 Comments

Tokyo lion bus, quite literally

Tokyo’s public transportation system really is a thing of wonder, but personally, traveling by bus has never been a pleasant experience; traffic in the city can be pretty awful, plus I’m never completely sure if I’ve boarded the right vehicle or not. This latter problem in particular makes every journey feel like a magical mystery tour of sorts, which in some cases can be quite fun, but not when a specific destination, at a specified time, is the target.

Yet that said, if every journey involved views of lovingly recreated Kenyan mosques and really up close lions like this one, then I’d be inclined to get the bus a bit more often.

Jan 13 2012 24 Comments

Mount Fuji in winter

Many sights and sounds are fascinating at first. A charm they might well retain for quite some time too. Yet inevitably that initial glow begins to fade, and while they may not exactly become mundane, they do end up getting taken for granted.

Mount Fuji, however, isn’t like that. No matter how many times one sees it, or from how many different angles or locations, it somehow always retains its mystique. Its majesty. Its memorableness.

Plus it’s also accommodating when it comes to photographs, very kindly allowing the viewer to easily capture its splendour. Well, to a certain extent that is, as only the very best can really represent the satisfaction of seeing it for real, whereas the rest of us have to make do with merely passable reproductions.

Jan 11 2012 22 Comments

Japanese women: different generations, different directions?

In the field of technological innovation or adaptation, Japan is often leading the pack, yet in regards gender equality, the country is still very much a luddite. The life expectancy of Japanese women, of course, is second to none, but when it comes to any kind of economic or political parity, they are very much at the wrong end of the scale. In fact, after reaching the dizzy height of 94th in the world according to The Global Gender Gap Report in 2010, Japan has now slipped back to 98th, just about forcing Kenya and Belize to the outer extremities of the top 100.

And yet despite Japan’s woefully low position, it’s clear that things have changed — just very slowly that’s all. A shift that means those young women who came of age this year will enter a world different from the one their mothers and grandmothers ventured into. A world not exactly poles part, but one that does at least offer the option of independence, along with the possibility of heading in a very different direction.