Writing Portfolio

(click on links to read articles)
Recent articles published by Kyodo News:


Renee Zellweger celebrates her hero in "Judy" as movie released in Japan

 Disney wants visitors to "join the Resistance" (photos and story)

 'Queer Eye' mini-series shows individualistic side of Japan

Christian Bale's virtuoso turn as "Vice"

Japanese guitarist channels spirit of Led Zeppelin legend Jimmy Page

 Japanese manga artist Naoki Urasawa's work showcased in Hollywood (photos and story)

 East LA Chicano trio bring Day of the Dead vibe to Japan (photos and story)

Massive Disneyland collection goes up for auction in California

 Yayoi Kusama's LA exhibit drawing enthusiasts (photos and story)

 Japanese 'wine king' exhibit lost in California wildfires (photos and story)




My 80-page graduate thesis at UC Berkeley looked into the appeal of abandoned buildings as a photographic subject and how the popularity of this genre has had an impact on the issue of architectural preservation when it comes to modern structures in Japan. No Man's Land, published as the cover story in the Tokyo English-language magazine Metropolis, is a much abbreviated version of my scholarly paper.




FluentU, a language learning blog, published two articles of mine (very much in the style and format of the site) on methods for improving your Japanese skills:

How to Watch Japanese Dubbed Movies Online and Off

The Chillest Way to Study Japanese: Curl Up on the Couch and Watch Japanese TV Online



From 2007 through 2012, I worked for a Japanese publishing company whose client was Toyota Motor Corporation. My main duty was writing and editing a global magazine called Team Toyota, which promoted Toyota's corporate philosophy and marketing campaigns to distributors around the world. Here's an example of one feature article:

Mission for Marketing


In the summer of 2006, before starting my second year of graduate studies at UC Berkeley, I was a news intern at the Daily Yomiuri newspaper in Tokyo. I wrote Saving the Sanshin Building, but it was pulled at the last minute by the managing editor because he felt it was too controversial and made property developer Mitsui Fudosan into the "bad guy." A lot of time and effort went into the story, so of course I was disappointed. However, this article served as a turning point for me as it eventually helped me decide on the architecture/photography angle for Master's thesis.


From the Hip a feature cover story published in Metropolis magazine, showed how young Tokyo-ites embraced hip-hop music, fashion and dance and made it uniquely Japanese.

Screen Dreams, another feature story published in Metropolis magazine, spotlighted foreign filmmakers pursuing their craft in Japan.

For a couple years in Tokyo I was also a regular bar reviewer for Metropolis magazine. Here's some links to a few samples of my reviews from their online archives:

Nakamura Keita

Donzoko




Nitpicker menaces Star Wars galaxy is a fun piece that I wrote for the Marin Independent Journal before "Star Wars - Episode I - The Phantom Menace" was released in 1999.







Here's an article I wrote about how science fiction author Philip K. Dick used Marin County and the Bay Area as locations in his novels and stories (notice how there's no hyphen in science-fiction on this article, but the one below has a hypen, the result of different editors working without a consistent style-guide! Blasphemy!):

Marin's master of science fiction (Marin Independent Journal) (part 1)

Marin's master science fiction (part 2)











Here's an article I wrote about the author Neal Stephenson:

He applies cyber touch to science-fiction (Marin Independent 
Journal)

(part 2)
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