Who Makes It Happen?

Tokyo Journal has been around in one form or another since 1981. Over the last 25 years we have consistanly supplied Tokyo with the most up-to-date Emglish-language information on what's what and who's who, plus some exciting and ground-breaking stories from our writers across Asia and the world.

In May of this year (1995) Tokyo Journal went live for the first time on the World Wide Web, with the aim of bringing the same service to the world that it has brought to this city.

Here we introduce some of the people who make Tokyo Journal what is today, and offer our thanks to some of those people who are helping us move into the future.

Greg Star - Editor
Gregory Starr left Tennessee in 1970 to attend Tokyo's Sophia University. He paid his tuition by driving a meat delivery truck through Tokyo's traffic and continued in his early career working as a day laborer in Izu, writing lyrics for Japanese rock bands, selling noodles to housewives in Tokyo supermarkets and voice-dubbing Tora-san movies. This was the perfect education for an editor of Tokyo Journal, but he still keeps his driver's license, just in case.

Mark Robinson - Deputy & Music Editor
Born in Tokyo in 1961, to a Japanese mother and Australian journalist father. Moved to Sydney, Australia at an early age, where he began work as a stage lighting technician/designer after graduating from high school. Had little interest in things Japanese (except for his mum) until his curiousity was piqued in his early 20s and he began studying the language at university. Visited Tokyo in 1988 on a six-month working holiday visa, fell into the family trade (his sister is also a journalist) and although he now occupies the deputy editor's chair of Tokyo Journal, admits he is still "scratching the surface" of the city. "It's big," says Mark. "And deep."

Kyoko Matsuda - Editorial Assistant
Kyoko is responsible for filing all the TJ bills and invoices, making records of what articles we've done so we don't write the same thing twice, and forging our fan mail. She is double-jointed and can fold her tongue into different and amusing shapes. Her favorite animals are horses and her favorite part of an artichoke is the part you can eat.

Michiko Toyama - Associate Editor
A native of Ibaraki, Michiko took what editors assured her was a one-month temporary position with the magazine back in 1987 and then proceeded to outlast all the other full-time staff. Now she lives in Azabu, eats proteins in her spare time, and will probably quit someday, when she's not so busy.

Yuki Furuya - Designer
When she's not looking for ghosts in her Yotsuya backyard or trading language lessons with her American boyfriend (using what she calls "the visual method"), this femme unwinds by designing the Cityscope section, including matching up all those little dots with the appropriate shops for our Area Spotlight map. "I want to slip in a few nude pictures of the editors," she says. "But someone stole my cameras in Wales."

Andi Hindle - Copy Editor & Webmaster
We found Andi on our doorstep one day, wet and shivering, and made him our intern in charge of grammar and hot soup. Two months ago later, he was our newest copy editor. And a month after that, he put himself in charge of the web. Andi's here on his pre-finals break from Oxford, where he's majoring in Japanese. He also interprets for visiting Shakespearean theater troupes, lives in a temple and thinks everything is splendid.

Lucas Badtke-Berkow - Style Editor
Fresh from U.C. Santa Cruz where he did his senior thesis on '60s fashion, Lucas came to Tokyo with a three-tiered plan: to put on shows, expand our Style section and wear all the hats he can in the process. We let him in our door because he said he'd work like a dog and we needed someone to chase cats away. Lucas is also studying Japanese, "but it hurts your brain more than it's worth sometimes."

Steve McClure - Overnight Sensation
The Tokyo bureau chief for Billboard, Steve was chasing obscure bands back in Canada when he developed the loss of hearing that would eventually produce a child (his wife said, "Do you want to sleep or what?" and he answered "What?"). Between listening to the Bonzo Dog Band and thinking up insults for mediocre pop icons, Steve hangs with his buds Jello Biafra and Johnny Rotten. His favorite color is off-white, so he bathes often.

Lindsay Davies, for not only writing the excellent HTML TOOLS in the first place, but also for providing great long-distance support. Without Lindsay, none of this would have been possible.

Jason E. Moore, author of the very un-inebriated SOBER WITNESS, for answering lots of questions.

Heather Noel Bobbie at GALAXY for being nice about it!

Bob Poulson at Ecola Design Web Services for letting us know.