Read Japan | Top Page

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1. Japan, explained by someone who actually lived it.

Not a guidebook. Not a “top 10” list. A Japanese counselor and university teacher showing you the Japan that’s quietly disappearing, the Japan that’s trending right now, and the reasons underneath both.

Start reading (Coming soon)

Meet the writer(Coming soon)

2. THE CONCEPT | Two doors into the same house.

Most of what the world reads about Japan comes from visitors passing through, or from the loud, exportable parts — anime, robots, neon. That Japan is real. It’s also a thin slice.

I grew up in Showa-era Japan and spent more than forty years as an educator and a counselor, listening to how people here actually think.

This site is my attempt to hand that over to you, in English: the ordinary rooms, the everyday objects, the sounds most Japanese people have already forgotten — and the quiet logic behind the behavior and trends that puzzle people abroad.

Same country. Two ways in.

3. THEN | The Showa Era Nobody Abroad Remembers

When people outside Japan picture “old Japan,” they picture tem THEN (Coming soon)

The Japan I remember is closer than that — and almost never written down. A specific teapot on a specific shelf. A street vendor’s call at dusk. A record turning in a room with a wooden floor.

This is a first-hand account of the Showa era: the objects that filled a home, and the sounds that filled a day — set down by someone who was there, before the last of it is gone.

Step into Showa (Coming soon)

4. NOW |What’s Actually Trending in Japan — and Why

Trends reach the outside world with their reasons stripped off. A word goes viral, a habit spreads, and the why gets lost somewhere in translation.

Here I take what’s happening in Japan right now and give you the part that usually gets cut — the psychology and the society underneath it.

Not just the phenomenon. The reason it makes sense to the people living it.

See what’s trending (Coming soon)

5. THE LENS | Why, not just what.

Everything here runs through one habit I can’t switch off.

After forty years as a counselor, I don’t just describe what Japanese people do — I ask why they do it.

That question sits under every piece on this site, whether it’s about a 1970s kitchen or this month’s trend.

6. ABOUT THE WRITER | Who’s writing this

I’m Issei — a counselor and university lecturer, writing from Japan. I’ve spent my life on two things: teaching, and listening to people.

Read Japan is where those meet the country I grew up in. I’m not here to sell you a Japan that fits on a postcard. I’m here to show you the one I know.

More about me and this site (Coming soon)

7. INVITATION | Pull up a chair.

Start with whichever door you like — the Japan that was, or the Japan that is. There’s no order to follow, and no test at the end. Just one Japanese person, telling you how it really was, and how it really is.

Read the first story (Coming soon)