Studio 360 in Japan

Studio 360 is a decent hour-long podcast that, about 75% of the time, will be moderately interesting, and the other 25% of the time will discuss or introduce me to something pretty cool (Mike Daisey's existence [mp3] being the most recent).



This week and next week, Studio 360 is in Japan [site, w/ mp3s]. Yes, there's a lot of the usual simpletonian cliche-blather ("it's ultramodern! it's ultratraditional! there's kimonos and miniskirts! noise and silence!") but there's also a decent amount of insight. (I'm only halfway into it

Pico Iyer's writing never thrilled me (neither did Donald Ritchie's), but the full interview (only 1/3 of which is in the video above) discusses marrying japanese chicks and not speaking the language, so, hey, two fer two!