In 1977, nine years after Tony Elliott started the then-alternative media London Time Out magazine, Kansai Time Out printed its first issue, an eight-pager with local listings and a smattering of Japan-related articles. Dominic Al-Badri, chief editor from 1997 to 2004, recalls that the info-packed pages had the look of a British tabloid newspaper, but from the start KTO offered something far more substantial for those with a genuine interest in Japan.

"If you made a mistake you had to literally cut out that little bit with scissors," he says of the publishing world in the early days of KTO. "Now it's all done by computer."

Al-Badri reckons it was the move to computers that saved KTO back when the Great Hanshin Earthquake hit Kobe just before deadline on January 17, 1995. Having the great fortune to have just moved from an office around Sannomiya in Kobe — which was leveled in the quake — then-owner David Jack retrieved files from the badly damaged but still operational office near Shin-Kobe Station. Working from backup computers at his home in the Hyogo countryside, Jack managed to save that issue, which led with a striking photograph of the earthquake on the cover.