Speed Tribes author goes home

[Steve Bildermann]

Home is where the heart is. Karl Taro Greenfeld, journalist and author of Speed Tribes, among others, has a nostalgic piece in Time Asia (Aug. '03) recounting his heady youth in Tokyo alongside his thoughts on his ailing Japanese grandmother.

http://www.time.com/time/asia/2003/journey/japan.html

My grandmother was dying, my mother told me. Your last chance, she said, this will be your last chance to see her. So I boarded a plane to Japan.

I was born in Kobe, Japan, of a Japanese mother and an American father. I had spent vacations there as a child and had lived throughout my 20s in Tokyo. That city has, over the years, become the focus of much of my nostalgia about my own youth.

Karl Taro Greenfeld Bibliography

[gkanai]

Steve, you could at least give me the attriibution

http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/34244

[Mulboyne]

Wherever the link came from, I enjoyed reading that.

[Steve Bildermann]

Dang - sorry GK - I have a macro setup to post from Metafilter with attribution but somehow (note the time of post - mind not in gear) I thought it was an anonymous post from Monkeyfilter

Mea Culpa. I be more careful in future.

Props to gkanai for the link.

[Mulboyne]

I've been keeping a look out for a few months now for the start of a new type of genre in Japan news reporting. I think we are going to get a slew of End of the "End of the Bubble Era" Era stories.
"Bubble Era" stories are about wild times, booming assets, crazy spending etc etc. "End of the Bubble Era" are stories about recession, restructuring, social decay etc etc.
I've been wondering what kind of tone/subject matter will start appearing from now and I think we are starting to get some clues.
These stories won't depend on whether the economy recovers this time. It will be more to do with the fact that journalists no longer see any real mileage in "Japan going down the tubes" articles.
In a strange way, I think Karl Taro Greenfeld may be one of the first in this emerging breed. Although his is a personal story, it looks at the bubble era not as if it has just ended but also with the implication that it is an experience which won't be repeated for the author no matter if the good times roll again.
That is bound to be one of the angles which will come up from a whole lot of writers who were young in the bubble - you might be having fun now but we really had some fun.
The other angle in the piece which may get more mileage is the focus on his grandmother which gives an emphasis to continuity amid change. I think that may be a theme too in this new genre - looking at what Japan manged to retain after nearly 15 years of economic malaise.
I could be wrong on this, there may yet be more important themes but the nostalgic tone of Greenfeld's piece struck me as the kind of difference we may get more of.