(or, Home is Where the Mat Is)
This summer I came to the multi-culti realization that, for me, home is where the mat is.
After living in Oita City the same number of years (past the decade mark) as New York City (where I resided before Japan), I realize that home is no longer a country or a town.
I found that a 60 cm X 180 cm space that I can roll up and carry with me does the trick to let me find my center, and to be at home wherever …

Micro-houses are about life reduced to it’s elegant essentials. No that’s a line any architect can fall in love with. Micro-house owners just call them cozy.

It was the year 2003 when I made my first trip overseas to spend time in another country. I was attending university, and so decided to spend a year overseas as part of the international exchange program that my school, the University of Northern British Columbia, had with various other post-secondary schools across the world. Our sister university in Japan was in Utsunomiya, named after the city, and was located in Tochigi Prefecture, about a two hour train ride north of Tokyo.

The gender gap yawns wide, despite Japan’s female astronaut and new anti-discrimination laws. The World Economic Forum recently downgraded Japan three spots to 101st place on its latest gender discrimination report. Japanese companies have long had a reputation of being unfriendly to women, especially mothers.

A chain of English conversation schools is closed down. Thousands of employees are left worrying whether they will get paid or keep their jobs. Students are told refunds will not be given on advance payments for lessons. G.communication steps in to pick up the pieces. The Geos bankruptcy on April 20 had much in common with the implosion of Nova in 2007. Then as now, foreign and Japanese staff working for an eikaiwa company face an uncertain future as G.communication gets to work restructuring a broken business.

Thousands of Japanese have protested over a controversial US military base on the island of Okinawa.

The location of the military base has long been a contentious issue, with both Washington and Tokyo disagreeing and locals who live on the island voicing concerns over the noise and pollution caused by the stationing of troops there.

A government subcommittee has drafted guidelines for the first time on teaching Japanese to foreign residents to make their daily life easier, officials said Thursday.

The draft guidelines compiled by the Cultural Affairs Council subcommittee lists examples of words and phrases that foreigners should be encouraged to learn for smooth communication in 10 main categories, including health care, travel and shopping.

Japan’s center-left government approved a bill limiting the hiring of temporary workers Friday, in a bid to reverse years of labor deregulation that it says went too far in favoring big business at the expense of workers.

But the proposals have drawn fire from all sides. Businesses and some economists say firms need flexible labor to remain lean amid fierce global competition. Meanwhile, some workers and small unions argue that the reforms don’t go far enough.

There are about 70 cases of American parents who are kept from seeing their children in Japan, and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell met with several of them in a group earlier Tuesday. He called their situations “heart-breaking.”

In some cases, Japanese mothers living overseas have fled to Japan with their children and kept the fathers from having any contact with the kids, even if court rulings abroad ordered joint custody.

This season you can find sushi, beer, curry, green tea, shochu, and baseball in their chocolate incarnations.

A variety of Japan’s tastes and trends are made into “cho-co” versions for the Valentines Day boom.