The Foreigner - Japan :: an online magazine on living, working and traveling in Japan

Last updated: Updates have been halted until further notice.

Feature
Foreign Reflections: Three stories of life in Japan

By Jesse Johnson

Shinjuku, Tokyo
Photo by ajpscs

Living in Japan isn’t easy for a lot of foreigners. But it isn’t that hard, either.

For Mike Green, Anthony Palmer, and Jay Matvichuk, three people who have more in common than they realize, life here has been a mixed bag. Although they’re from different places and different backgrounds, all found their way to Japan -- for a plethora of reasons -- as missionaries.

Life & Arts
Belly dancing in JapaN

Japan has been a closed society until recently. Now, Japanese are very interested in other cultures. Food, music and dance from other countries are gaining popularity fast, but nothing so fast as belly dancing.

Fiction
NOTB

Seated on the floor in the center of my sparsely furnished room, I took a long deep drag on my cigarette. My head started to spin with an intensity and velocity that made me feel nauseous. This was not the first time I had felt this way. My first ever toke had created similar feelings of sickness. But this time was different.

Opinion
Gambatte christmas

The middle of November, walking along the street in an urban area, the shrines on my left, the rising sun over my shoulder, Christmas trees all around me? Santa Claus in 7-11? Where am I? Can this be Japan? As a reputable member of a Japanese eikaiwa, I found it somewhat surprising...

Feature
An Idea of Freedom

Harajuku is an idea. Certainly it is the neighborhood in Tokyo in which to be young and to be seen, but like all things or places or people in Japan, below the surface lies more. On Sunday afternoons on a bridge adjacent to Harajuku Station on the Yamanote line, ...

Opinion
Have you meant your pictures lately?

It's said that a picture tells 1000 words. While I have never been a keen fan of photography, as either the subject or the picture taker, it is only recently that I have come to strongly disbelieve ...

Society
Harnessing the inner Japanese activist

Buy Nothing Day (November 25, 2006) started over 14 years ago in Vancouver, Canada but like many social memes, the power of its ideas propelled it around the world, where it eventually landed in Japan; most prominently...

Photo Essay

Toba

by Matt Goerzen

view all photo essays

Essay
A BUDDHIST FUNERAL THROUGH A FOREGNER'S EYES

My mother-in-law’s eighty-three year old uncle died yesterday, and now, at seven in the evening, we’re attending what is basically a prayer service before the funeral proper takes place tomorrow.