I just couldn’t appreciate what it must have been like for my mother to grow up in a city where you are the micro-minority—that is, until I moved to Tokyo…
On the appointed evening, the Rebbetzin turned up in front of my house with the rabbi idling the van in the driver’s seat…
The table was crowded with people I wouldn’t expect to see at a Chassidic gathering…
A household of perfectly matching teak furniture — and a solitary refuge, a teak island of a desk — couldn’t save my parents’ increasingly unhappy marriage…
For my Japanese mother-in-law, my moving to Israel was a disaster — and not just because I was tearing the family apart…
Aki worked for Akahigedo, a traditional Eastern medicine clinic that based its work ethic on the old Edo practice of training staff to surpass acupuncture and shiatsu technique. To become a master, you had to become acquainted with your own soul…
This is the account of my journey in-progress toward becoming Shabbos- observant in Tokyo. I have been married for 22 years to Akihiko Wakabayashi…
From New York City, the ink barely dry on a master’s degree in arts administration, I’d come to Tokyo to try my luck as an arts writer. My self-assigned beat became the top floor art galleries of Tokyo department stores, purveyors of some of the finest nihonga paintings in the nation.
When Binyomin Edery, the chief rabbi of Japan, was a child growing up in the farming village of Kfar Chabad in Israel, the nine-pronged menorah could be seen everywhere during the winter Hanukkah festival. So when he arrived in Japan during Hanukkah 18 years ago, …
A mother’s candid firsthand account of her bipolar daughter’s stay – and her own battle to cope…
Willy Foerster saved Jews fleeing the Nazis by employing them in his Tokyo factory but was framed as a collaborator after the war and has remained largely unknown…
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background. I was born in Montreal, raised and educated in the New York City area (Queens and Great Neck), graduated with a BA in…
