“Are you sure you’ve got the right Chuck Wilson?” The man across the table is obviously joking, but the question still gives me a moment’s doubt—the Chuck Wilson I had arranged to meet is a power lifting champion, judo expert, and former television personality. The man I’m talking to is large, but not remarkably so,…

The International Rugby Board Junior World Championship (IRB JWC) is the world’s most prestigious competition for international teams at the U-20 level of the game and on Friday, June 5 this tournament, comprised of sixteen of the world’s finest teams, will kick off at stadiums in Tokyo, Aichi, Osaka, Fukuoka and Saga prefectures. Not only…

With their massive dark wooden beams, whitewashed exteriors and grass-thatched roofs held together without the support of a single nail, bolt or piece of metal, it’s easy to see why architects from around the world marvel at the craftsmanship of traditional Japanese minka farmhouses. Unlike modern Japanese houses, which typically are around for only 20…

Among other claims to fame, the town of Kishiwada has the dubious honor of being the setting for director Miike Takashi’s ultra-violent, 1997 movie, Young Thugs, Innocent Blood, a harrowing account of growing up in a severely dysfunctional family. It’s difficult matching the scenes in the film with the tranquility of today’s town, though its…

It is practice day for the Tokyo Apaches. Although you may be a professional basketball team, because your league is new and an upstart (Japan’s new BJ League), you have to practice at the local YMCA. You can’t linger long after practice either because a very serious group of middle-aged badminton ladies have the gym…

For slam-dunks, sweet jumpers and non-stop end-to-end action, the National Basketball Association (NBA) is the league to watch. Going all the way back to 1946, the NBA has been the top men’s professional basketball league in North America with support and fans growing every year. The NBA has grown from a league low of just…

You breathe in steam, the smell of soap. The water around you is so hot that it feels like it is melting through your skin, dissolving the knots in your calves and the tension in your shoulders. When you step out of the water, skin steaming, you are clean and utterly refreshed. This is the…

You might say there are two Okinawa’s. The first we all know because it is tirelessly promoted on TV, milked to the last drop by tour operators. The other is a little harder to define: small islands out of the mainstream, where life goes on without the fuss and flurry of activity that precedes the…

Yoga’s rich heritage has allowed it to become a symbol of any number of philosophies, physical or otherwise, that have begun to redefine modern attitudes towards health and wellness, in Japan and around the world. WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT YOGA If you’re looking for the “essence” of yoga, you’re in for…

It’s almost midnight and by rights you should be curled up on the sofa in pre-bed chillout mode, watching nonsense on Fox. Instead you’re still at work. You’ve just got out of a weekly conference call with HQ in London and being that it’s HQ, GMT always trumps EST, as antisocial as this makes all…