The most important thing to tell you is that I make my photographs with a large format camera (4×5-inch) by color negative film.　Exposure time is from 2 to 8 minutes. I print color photographs by myself. It takes more than one day for me to finish printing. I do not manipulate digitally the result at all. It is interesting that finished analog works appear to be digitally made. [Interview]

Whenever I meet new American friends, at an SF convention, a party, or even at an airport, they always say, as soon as they find out I'm from Japan, "Oh, yeah! Japan is cool, huh?" That has been happening for more than twenty years. Of course it feels good to have people praise your own country, but I would always stop and wonder what exactly they liked. Sometimes they would get more specific, praising our anime, technological gadgetry, or Haruki Murakami. On the one hand I'd agree, but then again their rock/punk/rap music, PCs, or William Gibson/Raymond Carver/Tom Robbins all seemed even cooler to me. When they would elaborate, explaining how excellent Urusei Yatsura or Pokemon or some esoteric otaku things were, things would just get more and more puzzling. To me, these were all kid stuff, not to be taken seriously.

Our new hip culture wasn't based on any tradition, and those who said it was were a bunch of neophiles, I thought.
How wrong I was.
Neophilia has been, and still is, the key element in our culture. We have a long tradition of importing new things and welcoming them just for their novelty, from Buddhism, guns, playing cards, and tea to RPGs. And as for kid stuff - well, hey, our pop culture has been based almost entirely on childishness. [Takashi Ogawa in der Einleitung zu seinem Artikel A New Generation of Japanese SF Writers]

I am haunted by the same nightmare for years; It is about the destruction of a so far surviving jewel of end 60's architecture, the New Sky building (gunkan-mansion), I had the pleasure to live in for nearly two years.
Let it never be true!!

Wir alle erfahren es jeden Tag. Österreich, auf Japanisch "ōsutoria", wird fast immer mit Australien "ōsutoraria" verwechselt.
Wir wollen jedoch unverwechselbar sein. Aus diesem Grund haben wir Nachforschungen angestellt und dabei herausgefunden, dass Österreich früher in Japan auch anders geheißen hat. So wie Ungarn mit "hongarī" (heute hangarī) übersetzt wurde, bezeichnete man Österreich in Japan vom 19. Jahrhundert bis 1945 unter anderem auch als "ōsutori". Auch heute noch wird von vielen der Begriff "ōsutori" als Österreich verstanden.
Weder in der Vergangenheit noch heute gab es in Japan für Ländernamen eine Standardisierung.
Die früheste Quelle, in welcher Österreich phonetisch als "ōsutori" bezeichnet wurde, stammt aus dem Geografiebuch "Bankoku Chimei" aus dem Jahr 1873.
Seit der Weltausstellung in Wien im Jahr 1874, an der auch Japan teilnahm, wurde für Österreich vermehrt die Bezeichnung "ōsutori" verwendet.
Wir wollen nun ab sofort "ōsutorī" heißen, wobei eine lange Aussprache des "i" die Abgrenzung von Australien noch deutlicher macht. [Beschluss, unterzeichnet vom Botschafter und vom Handelsdelegierten]

Higashi-Ikebukoro is one of Tokyo's outermost neighborhoods, but it's become a destination for female manga fans because the major manga store branches there specially stock works written by and for women. These specialty shops are six-, seven- and eight-story buildings filled from top to bottom with commercial and doujinshi manga, and tie-in products like figurines, trading cards and stationery. This area has become known as "Otome Road," the female answer to Tokyo's geek-centric Akihabara district.

When I visited Ikebukuro's Mandarake store last week, the crowded aisles were packed with curious, energetic women purchasing all types of manga. There were aisles and aisles of fan-fiction doujinshi, and the women seemed to know exactly what they were looking for -- particular characters drawn by particular artists. [wired]