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July 16, 2024
 

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Mark Schreiber

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Mark Schreiber
Mark Schreiber worked as a salaryman in travel, consumer electronics, computer software, advertising and market research before turning to translation and writing full time. A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he has lived in Tokyo since 1966.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 27, 2010
Must Hello Kitty really die?
"I love Cantonese," proclaims Fiona Yu. "I can express myself at a whole new level of crudeness and vulgarity that I can't with English."
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jun 23, 2010
A veteran plumbs his path to Japanese fluency
On a trans-Pacific flight to Narita several months ago, I struck up a conversation with a passenger who was upbeat about living in Japan. After six months, he told me with a self-satisfied grin, he had "just about got all the hiragana down pat."
JAPAN / Media
Jun 6, 2010
The timing behind yakuza crackdown
The media has been filled with revelations of ties between professional sumo and organized crime. Since late May, the tabloids and gossipy "wide shows" on TV have made a huge flap over Sehei Kimura and one other stable master for allowing senior gang members to obtain box-seat tickets to the Nagoya Grand...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 26, 2010
Dealing with sincere and sesame forms of flattery
It's been many years since I've heard anyone remark to me,「日本語がお上手ですね」("Nihongo ga ojōzu desu ne," "Your Japanese is good").
CULTURE / Books
May 23, 2010
Murder, mayhem and brain eaters abound in two Thai thrillers
Thailand, as I write this, is stepping back from major civil unrest. And Canadian author Christopher G. Moore has been blogging frontline dispatches from his home in central Bangkok.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 18, 2010
Hard men have the most reason to weep
Ever since I saw the 1967 film "In the Heat of the Night," in which black homicide detective Virgil Tibbs (played by Sidney Poitier) brought a redneck killer to justice in Sparta, Mississippi, I confess to having been totally hooked on the "ethnic detective" genre. It's a popular formula because it allows...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 28, 2010
Writer's idle hands drawn to dirty work
In Paul Theroux's 1977 short story "Diplomatic Relations," an American diplomat in Malaysia receives a letter from a female colleague, his former lover, warning of her impending visit. Their reunion in a Singapore hotel is brief and awkward, and the diplomat's sentiments, summed up in the final line...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Mar 24, 2010
Get the sukūpu on crime terms in Japanese
Sometimes I'm asked how I came to be interested in crime in Japan. I guess it began in my early days here as a student and lowly paid salaryman in the late 1960s.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 28, 2010
Seoul brothers take to the streets
Can the term "historical mystery" be applied to works set in the early 1970s? Perhaps not. But Martin Limon's series, now up to six volumes, reliably and compellingly captures the lives and times of George Sueno and Ernie Bascomb, sergeants assigned to the Criminal Investigation Division of the U.S....
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Feb 24, 2010
Confucius says reading on will help your Japanese
I remember the first kanji I ever wrote. In fact, I still have them — a Chinese aphorism roughly equivalent to "seeing is believing." In 1964, I awkwardly copied them out of a book on linguistics from my high school library in North Carolina. I was about to turn 17 and could not possibly have imagined...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 31, 2010
Bright lights, big city, book-loving ninja
In 2008, prolific novelist Andrew Vachss (it rhymes with "tax") brought down the curtain on his series of 18 novels featuring the protagonist Burke, "an ex-con turned avenging angel for hire." Vachss' newest work, "Haiku," lacks the urban mercenary's charismatic presence, but it does return to familiar...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 10, 2010
Ink-stained wretch meets psychic teen freak
It was, as one might expect for a psycho-thriller, a dark and stormy night. Taking a hint from Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), Miyuki Miyabe wades into her narrative with, "I couldn't see more than a yard in front of me, even with my headlights on. The rain poured down and the road was full of puddles...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jan 3, 2010
Jake Adelstein: Insider reaching out
Author Joshua "Jake" Adelstein supposes that if he'd stayed home in rural Missouri and had never come to Japan, he'd probably have become a small-town lawyer or a very happy detective on the local police force.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Dec 30, 2009
Need to know those buzzwords to follow Japan's big hit products
Of all the jobs I've held in Japan, by far the most challenging was the four years I spent during the baburu keizai (バブル経済, bubble economy) as a trend watcher for a market-research company.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 6, 2009
There's something dark in the basement
HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET, by Jamie Ford. Ballantine, 2009, 320 pp., $24 (hardcover) Reviewed by Mark Schreiber "Bitter and Sweet" is not just the intersection of two streets in Seattle, but a fair description of the story behind the title. It is 1986, and Henry Lee, a retired draftsman...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Nov 18, 2009
Let's kensaku — searching the Web in Japanese
Has this ever happened to you? A friend in another country e-mails a plea for help in finding information in Japanese due to their encountering any one of several obstacles. For instance, the operating system or software on the computer they are using might not be able to input Japanese or read it. Or...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 15, 2009
Crime worlds collide in Kowloon
NINE DRAGONS, by Michael Connelly. Little, Brown and Company, 2009, 384 pp., $27.99 (hardcover) Michael Connelly's series character, LAPD homicide detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch, had a rough time as a youth. His mother, a Hollywood party girl, was murdered and he was raised in foster homes until...
CULTURE / Books
Oct 18, 2009
Classic tales of newsprint noir
While a senior at Tokyo's Sophia University, 23-year-old Missouri native Jake Adelstein was heading home from a Shinjuku cinema when, on a whim, he dropped into a game arcade and popped u00a5100 into the slot of a fortunetelling robot for some mystical career advice.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Sep 30, 2009
Learn the coded language all Japanese know
Encoding and decoding may be almost as old as writing itself.
CULTURE / Books
Sep 27, 2009
Murder with hefty history
PAPER BUTTERFLY, by Diane Wei Liang. Simon and Schuster, 2009, 227 pages, $24.00 (hardcover) Reviewed by Mark Schreiber Mei Wang, the Beijing-based female private investigator who made her first appearance in "The Eye of Jade" (2008), is back. Burned out by the demands of her job in the Ministry...
Who needs AI when you have Hatsune Miku?
Over the first six months of 2024, a handful of songs using Vocaloid singer Hatsune Miku’s voice have enjoyed widespread attention, underlining a global interest in the character and the technology she represents.
Bloodied Trump survives assassination attempt at political rally
Former U.S. President Donald Trump is surrounded and evacuated by Secret Service agents at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. Trump was rushed off stage at the rally after shots rang out.
Shooter came within inches of killing Trump, but left few clues as to why
An aerial view shows the stage where Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump had been standing during an assassination attempt the day before, and the roof of a nearby building where a gunman was shot dead by law enforcement, in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Sunday.
Yen’s woes seem too big for even a BOJ hike this month to solve
The Bank of Japan headquarters in Tokyo
How to beat Japan’s summer heat in ways better for the planet
Tenugui towels hang up to dry at a dyeing company in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, on May 8. The durable and versatile tenugui, which many people have in their homes, can be used in many ways to cool one’s body.
The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'
Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.
How to beat Japan’s summer heat in ways better for the planet
Tenugui towels hang up to dry at a dyeing company in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, on May 8. The durable and versatile tenugui, which many people have in their homes, can be used in many ways to cool one’s body.
After Trump shooting, U.S. presidential race might take a violent turn
United States Secret Service Counter Snipers stand guard on a rooftop during a campaign rally for U.S. President Donald Trump in Avoca, Pennsylvania, in 2020.
No AC this summer? No problem (for me).
Think air conditioning is a requirement for a Tokyo summer? Think again.
She’s paying ¥1 million to help behind the scenes at the Paris Olympics
Mai Tarumi, who previously volunteered at the postponed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, has a travel budget of ¥1 million for her trip to volunteer at the Paris Games.

Podcast

You can often see generations of families enjoying performances together at Fuji Rock Festival.
Japan’s summer music festivals are feeling the heat in more ways than one

Longform

Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.
The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'
By Tomoko Otake

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Exploring Japanese culturevia Tohoku’s festivals
Exploring Japanese culturevia Tohoku’s festivals

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