Whaling has been a major part of Japanese culture for well over 1,000 years. In times gone, an old Japanese proverb spoke to the efficiency of the practice: "There's nothing to throw away from a...
I was recently approached to work on a script. At first I was pretty excited about it. It was the brainchild of someone I’d worked with before, someone I liked and had worked well with on previous...
“What is that?” My friend asked me this when she saw the little “altar” I’d set up in the corner of my living room. I say “altar” because it’s not really an altar. Calling it such...
Kalpana Chawla was born into a culture that didn’t necessarily share the big plans she had for herself. Born in Karnal, India in 1961, the youngest of four, a future as wife and mother was expected...
Once upon a time, mukashi mukashi, there lived a beautiful woman in Yotsuya named Oiwa. A ronin (a masterless samurai) named Iemon wanted to marry Oiwa, but her father knew of Iemon’s misdeeds and...
When you donate to a massive charity like Oxfam, you know that some of your cash goes to maintain the shiny corporate image of the organisation but you also imagine the bulk of your donation going...
In early February, it was reported that the United Nations envoy to Myanmar had uncovered numerous mass graves filled with the chemically-charred corpses of an untold number of Rohingya Muslims,...
The Donald is fomenting war with North Korea. North Korean athletes are attending the upcoming Winter Olympics by special arrangement. The world is holding its breath. And the population is starving....
In Japan, NHK (Japan’s public broadcasting organization) produces a program called Cool Japan. In it, new transplants to Japan are taken on cultural field trips around the country. In the...
For President Donald Trump and President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, their recent meeting couldn’t have gone better. Egos were stroked, there was no talk of those pesky “human rights”...
