Japanese empathy towards boredom snacking — I was recently asked by a reader, “I once read this Japanese word, “Kuchisabishii” — would you mind sharing the meaning of it?” Ah, yes. Kuchisabishii. I’ve been hearing it a lot more these days in Japan, sometimes over Zoom calls and sometimes thrown around the house. When I catch…

Visit a McDonald’s in Japan and you’ll understand why — Whenever I talk to someone who has visited Japan, an ex-pat who has lived there or a tourist just passing by, they will more often than not mention something about the fast-food chains there. “If they tried to pull the same stunt…

For people stressed or intimidated by fitness culture — In the United States, I’m often bombarded with images and ads of fitness culture. Athleisure is the craze, and it seems that the majority of people are members of gyms like Anytime Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness, or LA Fitness. Any decent hotel or typical college campus…

What makes something beautiful? The answer may comfort you — What is the most beautiful Japanese word to exist?​ What is the most beautiful Japanese word to exist?​ This was a question posed by the Japanese national broadcaster, NHK, in a public survey. And the answer astounded me. Learning about this survey, my mind immediately went to the more poetic aspects of Japanese. As a language, Japanese has a…

It’s not just their school lunch, but what they’re taught about habits — According to research by Unicef, among 41 developed countries in the European Union and the OECD, there is only one country where fewer than one in five children are overweight: Japan. It’s an alarming statistic that I’m not necessarily happy about — I wish all countries everywhere had lower levels…

Japanese acceptance and the kindest thing you can do for yourself — We all have tough weeks. And sometimes bad things just feel like they coming wave after wave. Setbacks we could usually accept with compassion, sometimes begin morphing into a tsunami of self-loathing.​ Why did I do that? I’m a terrible person I’m so stupid, everyone thinks I’m incompetent​ It almost…

A better and kinder perspective on productivity — How are you doing these days? How do you feel when you wake up? Many of us start our day with the feeling that we are behind. Behind in work, in school, our health goals, our finances, or our relationships. Prolonged, we end up feeling like we are spending our…

A Japanese perspective on determination and resolution — When my friends and I just graduated college, for a lot of us it was a very confusing and unsure time. We didn’t quite know what we wanted to do, how we wanted to do it, and we didn’t really know what to make of the opportunities presented to us. …

An important lesson from an unassuming place — I recently made the funny discovery that my dad likes to watch shiba-inu (a Japanese dog breed) Youtube videos before he goes to sleep. As he was showing me some, we came across a particularly cute video of a dog and his elderly owner. In the…