Japan Life Stories

Fariza shares a great story, from moving to Japan from her home country in Uzbekistan to bootstrapping 50 businesses in 3 years, being a panelist alongside Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, and writing for the Nikkei, one of Japan's biggest newspapers. Fariza speaks 7 languages, is an expert in cross-cultural communication and her background is a true inspiration and a model of entrepreneurship and self-empowerment.

Tyas Sosen is a Belgium Tea Ceremony Master from Kyoto. He has been living in Japan for over a decade, trained in an impressive number of traditional arts like calligraphy, kendo or flower arrangement before eventually joining a famous lineage of tea masters. During the next hour, we'll discuss tea, of course, but also Buddhism, Taoism, mindfulness, martial arts and the underlying principles of the tea ceremony. This is the perfect episode to lift your spirits and take your mind away from the daily worries we all face at the moment.

More famously known online as AGK42, Alex's unique style of photography attracted a strong following on Instagram. When he is not working as a UX designer at bitcoin.com, Alex spends his nights exploring and capturing Tokyo's hidden streets. He also launched a great campaign running until early February where all the profits coming from his online shop will go directly to helping animals impacted by the terrible fires that devastated Australia recently.

Alessandro is on a mission to archive Kyoto's cultural landmarks through virtual reality and high definition 3D videos. He recently covered events such as the Gion Matsuri and was an ambassador for Kyoto at the Grammy Awards ceremony. We discussed his love for Kyoto, his challenges working with the most traditional institutions and the responsibility of being a foreign resident in a city impacted by mass tourism.

Kyoto & Design | Hirisha Mehta is the Head of Design at Kyoto Journal, an award-winning magazine sharing artistic and cultural insights all across Asia. Hirisha's background includes experiences designing at Universal Studios and creating her own Japanese typeface. In this very rich episode, we discuss typography, scripts, Japanese design, Kyoto as a creative hub, architecture and local dialects.