In homogenous Japan, this bilingual blog shines a light on Tokyo’s foreign residents

Nearly 20 million foreign tourists visited Japan in 2015. It’s common to bump into a foreigner while shopping in Tokyo or visiting the temples of Kyoto – perhaps even unavoidable depending on the time of year. Coming across a foreign resident is less common. As of 2014, there were only 2 million non-Japanese living in the country of over 127 million.

Japan is, ethnically speaking, about 98.5 percent pure Japanese – the third most homogenous country on the planet, behind only the Koreas.

Isao Tokuhashi (pictured above), the founder of My Eyes Tokyo, spends the majority of his time looking for members of the other 1.5 percent.

From TV producer to entrepreneur

My Eyes Tokyo, or MET for short, is an online media startup Isao launched in 2006. Via brief interviews and photographs, MET offers a peek into the daily lives of foreigners living and working in Japan. It’s reminiscent of the popular Humans of New York blog, which is approaching 17 million followers on Facebook, but with less of an emphasis on photography and more of an emphasis on text.

[Americans] aren’t just American, but African American or Italian American.

From 2001 to 2002, Isao interned at a Fox affiliated TV station in Fresno, California. It was a life-changing experience for the Japan native, born and raised in Tokyo and the surrounding suburbs. Before relocating to the US, his only trip outside of Japan had been a short vacation to Hong Kong.

Isao attended a free English school when he wasn’t working, where he met other foreign transplants from across the globe. In many ways, the diversity in his classroom reflected the diversity of the US itself.

“One of my favorite things about America is the cultural roots – people aren’t just American, but African American or Italian American,” Isao tells Tech in Asia. “ I fell in love with the diversity, and I was curious about how they viewed a homogenous country like Japan.”

At the end of his internship, Isao returned to Japan to become a television news producer. He’d go on to work for two of the largest TV networks in the country, but despite his professional success, Isao felt like he had left a part of himself behind in America.

“I missed that environment when I came back to Japan,” he says. “I wanted to continue meeting people from around the world, and I became curious about their lives here.”

Japan to the world, the world to Japan

MET went live in 2006 as Isao’s personal blog. His first interview was with a backpacker from the Netherlands who had only been in Japan for a short time. The backpacker gushed about how much fun he was having in Japan, but didn’t offer any deep commentary on his experience in the country. Isao decided to focus on longer-term residents who could share both positive and negative stories about their lives in Japan. He also began profiling Japanese people who have lived abroad, or who have strong connections to foreign countries.

Profiles and articles on the MET homepage.

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