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?"
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.
We'd also like to thank the following for helping make TJWeb into what it is
today...
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.