On Nov. 12, 2022, the English-language writing world lost a luminary whose life and words transcended borders. Former Japan Times writer Angela Jeffs passed away in Scotland at the age of 81.
Jeffs began writing for The Japan Times in an era before everyone’s phone was smart and Google was the oracle. For the international community, she was the search engine.
For 24 years, she wrote articles of all sorts. But the crown jewel was, perhaps, the Lifelines column for the Community page. In it, she sought to answer readers’ questions about how to accomplish everyday tasks in Japan, simple things that she must have herself encountered when she first arrived on these shores.