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 English-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 Starr - 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 - Webmaster at Large
Andi came here on his pre-finals break from Oxford, where he's majoring in Japanese. Now as the exams loom he's sweating like a lunatic back home to catch up on all he missed out on carousing with us. Go for it, Andi!

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."

Renfield Eric Feinstein - Webmaster, Jr.
Ren's job is to keep the office supplied with Pringles and to come in from Narita every weekend to code TJWeb. When not educating Japan's junior high school masses on proper use of the more descriptive English adjectives or getting beat over the head by old men with bamboo sticks, Ren is busy thinking up cool things to do with TJWeb.

Tony Lee - Production Manager

"I just want to hide out in the Classifieds," Tony told us one day. Then we discovered his penchant for donning red underwear because it "looks fast." We thought his soft-spoken-Aussie-newlywed-who-once-worked-for-an-
ice-hockey-publication act was going way too far until he mentioned his black belt in kendo. Now we believe his every claim, including that he can speak Guarani, an Amazon Indian language learned while in Paraguay. Yeah, right.

Yuko Hikimoto - Survival Research
Like fairytale character Urashima Taro returning from his underwater castle to an unrecognizable world, Yuko came back to Tokyo after four years in Paris and didn't know a single J-League goal-keeper's name. To make up for it, she produced a degree in Diplomacy and Strategy, honed her French accent to lilt in all the sexiest places and picked up the Survival, Film and Area Spotlight Research position.

Robbie Swinnerton - Food Column
Our new Food Editor can't seem to eat his way through Tokyo without a new restaurant whetting his appetite. And until "keeping his chopsticks in his hands" becomes impossible, this pensive, Kamakura-based Brit promises to continue eating and writing about it in Vogue, Kodansha encyclopedias, international business magazines, United Nations' publications and of course, Tokyo Journal. He has only one real worry: "Will I get as fat as John Kennerdell if I keep this up?"

Bertil Litner - Dispatches
Hit Asia as a fresh 22-year old in 1975, traveling from Istanbul to Manila to Tokyo to Denpasar before settling in Thailand to become a writer. His four books follow Burma's struggle for democracy, the history of the now-defunct communist movement, and the opium trade. What's left for the prolific Bertil? An autobiography which includes his retreat from Homong when Khun Sa and 300 troops interrupted his honeyoon with photographer Hseng Noung Litner.

Sasha-chan and Vivienne Maguire - Advertising Sales
This unflappable Scot negotiated her first TJ contract by singing all 15 verses of the client's theme song. Enter wide-eyed, three-month-old Sasha--who "speaks fluent Japanese"--and TJ's first oyako sales team has arrived. Viv's other activities include gazing at film star Motofuji's autographed polaroid ("He used my bedroom as a dressing room for a commercial") and teaching bathtub strokes to her budding swim star.

Don Morton - Film Editor
After cycling through 24 countries in two-and-a-half years, this Armani-bespectacled playboy brought his bike to Tokyo to chase after tireless young girls. Don toiled for four years as TJ's very first Editor-in-Chief until his promotion to "I can't believe I'm paid to do this" Film Editor. He sidelines as the Patron Saint of Acarajé, an afterhours salsa spicer, a prized rewriter for NHK and Robert De Niro's Tokyo nightlife consultant.

Tina Lieu
For keeping Renfield sane and helping get the web pages up every month.

Bare Bones Software, for the excellent html/text/code editor BBEdit. Thanks guys!

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.