Take a moment, and imagine urban Japan of the future. Did you picture corporate-branded smart cities, driverless cars zipping about high-rises and vertical farms, all against a backdrop of distant hills with drones hovering over rice fields, small green patches within the niches of yet another mega-solar power plant — a society apparently humming along...
The lecture will focus on the impact of the ongoing pandemic on international students in Japan and solutions offered by local civil society groups. As universities and governments are generally considered responsible for providing for international students’ wellbeing, there has been insufficient attention to alternative support providers, such as non-profit organisations (NPOs), peer support groups,...
As Tokyo readied itself to host the 2020 Summer Olympic Games, its most infamous postwar red-light district, Kabukicho, was surprisingly proactive in welcoming a growing number of international visitors. Boasting new large-scale hotels, capsule hotels created for salarymen now reinvented as low-cost options for tourists, and multi-language menus ubiquitous at local restaurants, enthusiastic efforts by...
Psychological theorem supposes that serious threats cause negative attitudes by ingroups to outgroups, i.e., outgroup bias. For example, the behavioral immune system theory claims a chain reaction from infectious threats to outgroup bias as the human defense against pathogens. However, what reduces outgroup bias from threats to health caused by a pandemic is unknown. This...
Foreign Nurses Working in Japan: Assessments of the EPA Program edited by Hirano and Yoneno-Reyes (2021) discusses the nurse migration from Indonesia, Philippines, and Vietnam to Japan under the EPAs’ framework, from multidisciplinary perspectives, including nursing. What makes this book unique from other similar books on migration of health professionals in contemporary Japan is that several...
Fantastical spaces, they are ubiquitous in contemporary Japanese literature, hidden, secluded, guarded, and with secretive and limited access, altogether reinforcing then ethereal and labyrinthe quality. A fantastical space resembles and yet varies from the everyday world we experience. This setting resonates with fantasy being the unseen culture, but also emphasizes on the boundaries and hence...