14 Comments

What's the back story regarding the name of your dog?

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Hahaha. Just thought a dog should have a more equal, normal name. The whippet before this was Kaneko kun, and this kid is Terashima kun. Relatable!

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Jul 24Liked by Jack Krown

Terrier-shima?

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The gentleman pulling down the dress reminded me of something that happened to me a few years ago. In a ladies room I exited the stall and went to wash my hands when a woman approached me apologetically, saying 大変失礼ですが… I couldn’t imagine what she intended to say to me but she informed me that my skirt was slightly rucked up in the back. I thanked her and fixed it but I’ve always remembered how humble she was in telling me something for my benefit. That kind of way of interacting that is the opposite of in-your-face is truly classy.

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Nice. It was precisely this with the older man.

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Jul 20Liked by Jack Krown

Japan is in fashion at the moment, so ‘everyone’ has to come here and ‘must’ have a life altering, ecstatic experience. This means the quality of the tourists has fallen out of the bottom of the bucket.

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I’m sure that’s the case. I imagine a decade or more ago you’d find much less the Insta people and many more who came for very specific interests.

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Jul 20Liked by Jack Krown

Quite so. I haven’t had a client yet who thinks that they’ve flown to Europe buts only a matter of time. I did have a colleague at the Japanese college I worked at the UK ask me which part of Hong Kong Tokyo was in.

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Years ago I had NY colleagues who knew I’d spent a lot of time in Japan. They wanted to know if I speak Chinese. I said no.

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Speedrunners. I don't think it's a life altering experience they're looking for; it's like people who read self-help books but never actually implement anything - it's the dopamine they want.

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Jul 20Liked by Jack Krown

I think no one is expecting such experiences, they’ve just got to say they’ve had them because that’s currently the compulsory opinion about visiting Japan. I’ve met so many people who ask where I live, then tell me that they had the holiday of a life time in Japan recently but after a few drinks will tell me how much they hated the people, the food, the weather, the crowds etc and generally had a shit vacation. BUT back on Instagram, everything was awesome. Hopeful the bubble will burst soon and the compulsory opinion will be that Japan is overrated. Then we’ll only get people who have some genuine interest visiting.

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Jul 20Liked by Jack Krown

I don’t think this will happen — that fantasy Japan that gets loaded into peoples’ brains around their late teens is just too powerful!

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I hope she's okay now, is she okay, do you know?

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I’m sure she is just fine. She wasn’t there hours later—poof, like it never happened. I’m sure she woke up, deeply apologized, and went back to her place.

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