INTOUCH Magazine
INDEPTH | FOCUS
Seven Dynamic Decades
As the Club’s Women’s Group celebrates its 70th anniversary, members reflect on how the community has shaped their lives in Tokyo.
Trailing spouse. Accompanying partner. Expat wife. These were once the standard definitions of women uprooted from their homes and left to forge meaning from their new lives abroad. If the passive overtones of these terms seem an imprecise match for the women of today, don’t blame the shift on political correctness.
Voice
Lighting the Way
A sense of adventure brought me to Japan. I arrived from Taiwan in 1981, and one of the first things that shocked me about Japanese society was how male-oriented it was.
This hit home after I mastered the Japanese language and secured a job at a local IT company. I soon lost count of the number of times I was asked to serve tea to my male colleagues, and I had to constantly remind my boss that I wasn’t comfortable doing it.
INDEPTH | WELLNESS
Making Fitness Fit
After three months following the Club’s newest holistic wellness program, one Member shares her surprise at how easy living healthy can feel.
"I’m over 50, so you really need to keep moving in order not to just lay down and die,” says Aleksandra Slonina with a laugh. “That’s my main goal: to keep fit and keep all the parts moving.”
INDEPTH | AUTHOR
Translating Success
Award-winning author Sayaka Murata talks reaching—and surprising—readers across cultural divides.
"They say I write literary fiction overseas,” says Sayaka Murata. “At an event in New York, someone taught me the term ‘speculative fiction.’ A college student in Iowa called Convenience Store Woman a science-fiction novel.”
