1. Don't get drunk and wear a tie on your head
2. Don't be in love with your iPhone
3. Headphones won't make you look any cooler
4. Videogames will only make you crankier
Make sure you don't exhibit any of these dangerous behaviors near the train tracks!
If you've ever been in Tokyo in December, you know that you can't escape Christmas decorations anywhere. When I exit my apartment door, the elevator hall in my parents' building plays holiday tunes. Big companies sponsor extravagant light displays, mom and pop shops sell reindeer costumes for little dogs, and there are a gazillion different kinds of Christmas trees on every street corner. This one, made of tiny Santa Claus dolls, is one of my favorites. If you want to see it in real life, it's in Tokyo Midtown.
Yesterday, I spoke on a panel at Cloudforce Japan 2011--an annual event hosted by Salesforce.com. Before my panel, there was a keynote speech by CEO Marc Benioff. The entire room, which fit about 5000 people, was illuminated blue and almost everyone was wearing a suit. During our panel, Mr. Toyoda, the CEO of Toyota, made a cameo appearance. We were all on World Business Satellite, TV Tokyo's daily business news show, last night. Full segment should be online next week.
I happened to be at a shrine a couple of weeks ago with the family when a wedding procession came directly my way. It's very beautiful, and quiet, and serious.
A big hooray for Taiga Ishikawa who--two Sundays ago--became the first openly gay elected politician in Japan. The 36-year old writer/activist published a book titled Where is my Boyfriend? in 2002, and runs a non-profit that hosts events for gay men. He just won a seat in the local assembly for Toshima Ward.
I know many gay Japanese men who moved here to San Francisco because of the lack of support and acceptance back home. When I grew up in Tokyo, gay men in the public eye were mostly just parodies of themselves on variety shows, or cross dressers, or just totally below the radar.
Ishikawa's a great advocate for LGBT issues in Japan because he can talk about them without alienating the more sexually conservative masses. In the video below, for example, he distinguishes between transsexuals and gays in a very colloquial, non-preachy tone. "I don't want to wear a skirt," he says with a friendly laugh. "I just want to love men as men." And then he talks about how he discovered he was gay, felt scared and closeted for a long time, and then eventually found out about others like himself on the Internet.
In 2008, Chronicle published my book: Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan.
I am also the founder of The Tofu Project, a boutique program that helps Japanese entrepreneurs and creators think deeper, tell better stories, and go out into the world in a much bigger way. We work with companies like Mixi, Japan Airlines, and Salesforce.com.
Sometimes I try to explain Japanese culture on CNN, BBC, CBC, WSJ, ABC (so many acronyms!) or in person at places like the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, ETech, and Ignite!
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Send tips to mango [at] tokyomango [dot] com
