KNOT ノット — where mass customization at affordable price is the norm What’s the fuss? Knot is a high quality, customized and Japan made watch brand sold at a fraction of the stuff that the Swiss and other watchmaker giants that it is inspired by produces. (Not to mention the excellent Japanese customer care to …
Author Archives: ilginyorulmaz
Analogue Strikes Back – 1: Handmade Business Cards
This is the first dispatch in a series of digital products and services with a modern twist on the analogue. NAKAMURA KATSUJI — return to handcrafted business card A small painting in a gold color frame of a man with a long, blonde beard, wearing a fur-trimmed cap jumps from the past to greet visitors …
Peanuts and Drinks: Uber Has Other Lessons to Learn From Japan
LATE NIGHT TAXI — small gestures that mean the world to a (tired) customer You work late in the office one night, miss the last train, and don’t have a choice but to ride a cab home. The rain has turned into a downpour and you are cursing to your bad luck. You hail a cab, …
A Japanese Hotel Business Idea Combines Traditional Hospitality with Innovation
FIRST CABIN — convenient luxury at low price Unlike a soulless business hotel, or a random room for daily rent, a stay at First Cabin feels like a fresh reinterpretation of that well-known Japanese fad — the capsule hotel. A high-end compact hotel in Atogayama near Nishishimbashi area, First Cabin is decked with woodgrain trims and an interior …
JAPAN: INSPIRATIONS/ EXPERIENCES/ SUBCULTURES
“…because Japan is the global imagination’s default setting for the future.” — William Gibson, science fiction writer who coined terms like “cyberspace” and “matrix”, 2001 As a researcher-turned-journalist, I have always been intrigued by Japan. I first came to this country in 1993 as a graduate student, and later worked here as a market …
Tokyo’s Misfit Sibling Comes of Age
Skylife, March 2018 — It’s best to say out loud from the outset an open secret: Osaka is not on the radar of everyone who visits Japan. Most people travel to Tokyo, the neon capital of the world, but bypass Osaka and continue to Kyoto, the country’s cultural heart. As the noisy and fun-loving sibling …
A Rhodes Scholar Speaks Out
An academic star of Haitian descent responds to Trump’s anti-immigrant remarks West Side Spirit — Jan. 22, 2018 Thamara Jean is a regular at Good Shepherd Baptist Church in Brooklyn, where she helps her family at the church all day every Sunday. For the 22-year-old political science major at Hunter College — who in November …
How Do You Stamp Out Child Marriage? Start With The Wedding Singer
HuffPost, Sept. 19, 2017 — VAN, Turkey — The men came unexpectedly, in the middle of the night. Gülmay Gümüşhan was fast asleep in her apartment in the easternmost Turkish province of Van, some 1,000 miles from Istanbul. They were allegedly sent by her estranged husband — a man she was forced to marry; a man …
Child Marriage Key Concepts and Glossary
By Selen DOĞAN Abortion: The removal of a foetus with surgical operation in case of an unwanted pregnancy or if the mother’s health is in danger. Women who get pregnant at an early age face a greater risk of injury or death. Adolescence: The transitional period from childhood to adulthood; a period in which children …
Religious Freedom And LGBTQ Rights Move From Battleground To Common Ground
HuffPost — June 17, 2017 Last weekend’s The Equality March for Unity and Pride in Washington D.C. offered a vivid reminder of the important role that leaders of faith and moral courage are playing in the continuing fight for full dignity and equality for LGBTQ people. “Queer people of moral courage have always been the …
