I think about Japan multiple times per day. I often remind myself that it is a truly rare, remarkable, highly influential, complicated, and inspiring country, and like all countries, it has flaws, tensions, and contradictions of all kinds.

One of the most memorable aspects of my first trip to Japan was meeting, producing, and photographing the breakdancing crew BodyCarnival for a project that I will announce in the future.

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.