William Bradbury - The Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA

Feb 22, 2017

Standing up to alienation on Tokyo's comedy scene

Japan is an easy place to foster self-delusion, and a failure at comedy is like a bucket of ice water to the face.

COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA

Dec 7, 2016

So you want to write about Japan?: the 10 essential tips

Having taken the daring — not reckless or avoidant — step of leaving your home country, you now have a million stories to tell.

CULTURE / Books

Apr 2, 2016

Finding the locus of David Mitchell

David Mitchell's world is always growing. Raised in England's West Midlands, Mitchell lived in London for a time before moving to Japan in 1994 — while he was in his 20s — to work as an English teacher. After eight years in Hiroshima, he returned to the U.K. to launch his career as a novelist.

CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES

Jul 4, 2015

Yasunari Kawabata's 'Palm-of-the-Hand Stories' are taut tales of the human heart

"Palm-of-the-Hand Stories" is a collection of 70 very brief stories by Nobel Prize-winner Yasunari Kawabata that were written between the early 1920s and 1970s. It contains poetic depictions of emotions, a focus on feelings rather than understanding. These stories present the chaos of the human heart,...

COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA

Jul 1, 2015

Getting creative when it comes to finding the motivation to study Japanese

I respect people who possess a high-level of Japanese proficiency the same way I respect people who are well-built. I don't respect the results of the effort so much as the discipline required to attain it. I can't deny that focus and perseverance are character traits I lack and thus envy in others because...

COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA

Apr 12, 2015

Expats can find their creative mojo in Japan's inspiration and isolation

The inflated sense of being special that Japan fosters among non-natives can be dangerous, but that same emotion can also lead you to do things that might otherwise feel like symptoms of a mid-life crisis.

CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES

Oct 25, 2014

No Longer Human

Osamu Dazai's "No Longer Human" comprises a series of three fictionalized notebooks, with each increasingly darker than the last. The character writing these books, Yozo, is detached from the beginning and is afraid of human interactions, but he learns how to socialize with people by playing the clown...

COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA

Oct 8, 2014

Bonding boozily over the pleasure and pain of Bukowski

The embrace of individuality combined with the pain of loneliness could explain why Bukowski's works have been embraced by many of the Japanese men I've met in Tokyo.

COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA

Aug 6, 2014

After the romance of expat life fades, the dream lives on

Some foreign residents in Japan might be living a dream on paper, but many are plagued by the question of if and when to return home.

CULTURE / Books

Jul 5, 2014

Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

It is noticeable that the tales in "Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa change in tone and style alongside the mental state and interests of the writer. Akutagawa's most famed early works (including the titular story) are intricately woven setups for moral questions, whereas...

COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA

May 28, 2014

Japan: a haven for the psychologically troubled

For the troubled Western expat in Japan, the reality of being on another continent can collide with normalized Japanese antisocialism to form a cocktail effective in tuning out a lot of the 'just be a normal adult' voices.

CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES

Apr 26, 2014

The Box Man

'The Box Man' is an existential work, revealing questions about identity and the place of man in society. The story begins in a diary format that reads like a how-to manual, as the narrator details the tools necessary to build a boxlike outfit complete with an observation slit for vision.

CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES

Apr 19, 2014

Shogun

This best-selling historical novel by the British author, James Clavell, is set in Japan around 1600. It begins when The Erasmus, a Dutch ship, reaches Japan by mistake. James Blackthorne, the English captain working for the ship (based on William Adams, the first Englishman to enter Japan) is singled...

COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA

Mar 12, 2014

With love and Japan, what you get out depends on what you put in

Moving to Japan makes an infant of us all, regardless of race, sex or creed. A major conflict in Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' comes from the fact that Prospero knew the language and Caliban the land, but when you first get to Japan, you know neither.

COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA

Jan 15, 2014

No refuge from booze in Tokyo, paradise for alcoholics in denial

Many of us foreigners living here know deep down that we and many of our friends are at least mild alcoholics, masking each other's addictions, and the allure of alcohol is not an easy monkey to get of your back. It's difficult in any city, though living in Tokyo provides it's own unique set of problems.

COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA

Dec 25, 2013

Tokyo, the city that's not as crazy as everyone thinks

As a Japanese friend of mine who has lived all over Japan once said, 'People from the Kansai area are like Latin people, but in Tokyo they're more like Germans.

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