Yuki Tatsumi was working as a waiter in a restaurant when one day, as he was cleaning up a table, he noticed that a customer had intricately folded up the paper chopstick sleeve and left it behind. Japan doesn’t have a culture of tipping but Tatsumi imagined that this was a discreet , subconscious method of showing appreciation. He began paying attention and sure enough noticed that other customers were doing the same thing. Tatsumi began collecting these “tips” which eventua

With mazes of expressways pushing scores of traffic through action filled, neon lit cities, there is perhaps no better platform than Japan to grasp the full motion and machinery of life. But sitting silently in the shadows waits another realm. Just as intoxicating, enchanting and engaging as its counterpart albeit not as animated or ablaze with flashing lights, hundreds of abandoned abodes lay forgotten and left to decay. Stepping away from the lights and into the shadows,

Sixteen essays by Soetsu Yanagi, key figure of the Japanese folk craft (Mingei) movement. A must read for anybody who liked Yanagi's book The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty. - Highly recommended. Published by JPIC | Hardcover | ISBN 978-4-916055-75-0 | 246 pages | March 2017

"Kintsugi is the remarkable Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with elegance and grace - a tradition with a lot to teach us more generally about how to handle the broken bits of ourselves." - School of life