Tag: Jonathan Clements

February 22, 2024 · 1 comment

By Jonathan Clements. Tamaki Tsuru ignores her mother’s complaints and applies to Aonagi University in That Fancy Tokyo, where she intends to make friends, fall in love and maybe do some studying eventually. Much more important is the selection of the right school club, because that will be the talent pool that supplies her future […]

February 7, 2024 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Unsure of what direction to take in life, high-school graduate Hiwa Natsunagi (Haruka Fukuhara) decides to become a professional hula dancer, like her late sister Mari. But she soon begins to wonder if hula dancing is the thing for her, when she proves to be the clumsiest, least hula-competent girl in her […]

December 17, 2023 · 2 comments

Jonathan Clements on some of the battles behind The Wings of Honneamise. Nobody knows who it was who walked into a Tokyo coffee shop, one summer day in 1984, and ordered a mix of Assam and Darjeeling, known in Japan as a Royal Milk Tea. But there was a cluster of earnest young men at […]

November 22, 2023 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. “Aren’t you making a mistake,” asks the lady selling cinema tickets. “Almost certainly,” sighs Alan Booth, a man who came to Japan to study classical theatre, and who finds himself glumly commissioned to sit through a ghastly Japanese teen movie so he can review it for a newspaper. No, says the ticket […]

November 16, 2023 · 1 comment

By Jonathan Clements. Scottish-born Iain Maloney writes of the way that he always needs a body of water somewhere nearby to feel grounded, to know which way is up. Living and working in Japan’s landlocked Gifu prefecture, he becomes aware that many of Japan’s early modern coastal defences, including a ring of vital lighthouses, were […]