Since I was an undergraduate student, I knew that dancehall music and culture were popular in Japan, and that a very small subset of the Japanese population took dancehall music and culture as seriously as the Jamaicans who created and innovated dancehall.

As part of a business development trip with a personal component, I ironically landed in Tokyo at Haneda Airport on Canada Day, July 1st, 2025, with no contacts, almost no capacity to speak or read Japanese, and no business leads.