Profile of the webmaster

The webmaster OKA was born in Chiba City, east of Tokyo.

In his school days, he acquired a ham license, learned violin and was a strong member of the "sumo" club of his school.

He was keenly interested in history, in particular ancient and medieval history, scientific topics as well as many genres of culture ranging from European classical music and Japanese ancient literature to Manga and Anime, contemporary theater and circus. Of course, he loves good food and sake.

You can acquire information on different topics about Japan in this site. However, that introduction of Japan is not the purpose of this web site. Instead, the webmaster wants you to understand what a Japanese individual thinks and feels. He therefore tries to take up in his essays various topics in which he is interested, so that the viewers could find a person with various facets which manifest uniquely as aspects of his identity. The original site "Japan as it is" was in fact the webmaster's response to the criticism from the American intellectuals that Japanese people are "faceless". He wants that foreign people, who usually do not have chance to contact Japanese people personally, will recognize that Japanese people are also the same as they are with flesh and blood, with emotion and vision.

The webmaster lived more than twenty years in foreign countries in Asia, Europe and Africa. He understands Japanese, German, English and to some extent Chinese, Kiswahili and Danish and collect information using these languages.

He is married and has a daughter. She got married recently, though she looked just a small baby in some of the "Japan as it is" articles.

Please enjoy and send me a message, if you have opinions or questions.