Thanks for following my work! I am an urbanist and translator who has lived in Tokyo since 2014. I’ve spent much of the past six years working on the creation, design, and construction of three renovation projects in Tokyo and Onomichi that have transformed old buildings into new common spaces. Here, I share stories from these experiences and my local activism, as well as my thoughts about cities and how Japan is changing in the post-growth era. Now that my construction projects are nearing completion, I’m thinking about writing a book and how to grow my organization’s impact in the next few years.
In 2017, I helped to start Tokyo Little House, a small cafe and postwar history gallery in a 1948 house in Akasaka, which we renovated again in 2024. In 2020, I co-founded Sento & Neighborhood, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of public baths across Japan. In 2022, we opened a community space known as Inari-yu Nagaya next to the historic Inari-yu bathhouse. Since 2020, I’ve also been going 6-8 times a year to Onomichi, Hiroshima, where my friends and I are renovating several houses into a community store and library. Head over to the projects page to learn more about each of these.
My work has been covered in the Japan Times, CBS News, NHK World, Toyo Keizai, Yomiuri Shimbun, Shinkenchiku, and many other outlets. I’ve written in the Los Angeles Review of Books. I sometimes guide visitors to Tokyo through the city’s history and urban environment, usually around themes of bathhouses and neighborhood life, or the WWII air raids and postwar occupation, on walks that lead to Inari-yu or Tokyo Little House. Get in touch if you’re coming.
I grew up in Denver, Colorado, and first came to Japan as a 16-year-old AFS student in Niigata. I now realize I was lucky to be part of the last generation of exchange students who got to enjoy immersion without the linguistic and social distraction of smartphones. I returned to the U.S. and studied at Pomona College, then worked as a reporter in New York for a few years before coming to Tokyo in 2014 for graduate school. After a year at Waseda University studying rural geography, I moved to the University of Tokyo, where I studied under sociologist Shunya Yoshimi from 2015-2017. You may be interested in my master’s thesis on the emergence of alternative spatial cultures in the margins of the post-growth city. I now live with my wife in northern Tokyo.
Please subscribe to the newsletter and follow me and my projects on Instagram. If you want to support my work and make it easier for me to devote my time to writing, consider contributing to our Labyrinth House campaign. Thanks for your support!
