samurai special
of outrage, murder and
unpredictable fate
breaking the glass ceiling

japan's business leaders
provide insight and advice
free gifts
insects
horse racing
a day at the races

puzzle
for the hardcore tokyoite
horse racing

hiking loose lips
what the japanese are saying
hiking
spotlight: iwate prefecture
tokyo faces
imperial belvedere
marriott
exclusive ambiente
tokyo faces - imperial belvedere

mori art museum

high ambitions for a high-rise art project

film reviews
confessions of a dangerous mind
adaptation,
basic
phone booth
secretary

events calendar
where do you want to go today?

cd reviews
Quante Musica, Sky Dancing 3

greater tokyo classifieds
from housing to services

music initiative
jump into the music biz

Events

tokyo time warp
book review
the world of insects

tokyo time warp
take a trip through the edo period

edo's lost adventurers
samurai in old england

jurassic park
a journey back in time

street art
hand-crafted movie posters

edo's lost adventures

Movers and Shakers
I don't know about you, but I'm one of those guys who gets by on a \500-a-day expense
account, courtesy of my wife who hands me one shiny coin every morning together with
an o-bento. Of course I don't spend all that money in one place. In fact, I manage to
save quite a bit, enough to party once in a while. Not that I have any vices, or
anything like that. But having more money than I can spend makes me feel really good,
almost on top of the world. At times, especially after having had one refill too many,
I even think I own this town. It's a great feeling, you should try it some time.
But then there are others who can afford being less careful with money. All those
lottery winners, for example. Or people in high places. The former may be super
rich out of sheer luck but the latter have usually accomplished their feat through
hard work and by constantly using their brain - mostly the left side of it, although
I know a couple of artists who have no sense of numbers, but are still living a
comfortable life. Point is, for this issue of Tokyo Journal we decided to go after
the real movers and shakers, people who, short of running this city, are ruling over
economic empires. Not heads of state, but heads of companies.
Enter Dr. Al-Jamie, TJ's point man for the hard stuff. Hard as in "hard- to-come-by."
Being a mover and shaker himself, Dr. Al-Jamie is naturally rubbing shoulders with
people in power. He even has little flags flying on the front fender of his big (for
big, read huuuge) foreign-made car which he uses to race between meetings. Dr.
Al-Jamie sometimes drops by at my humble abode, mainly because I live a few blocks
from his favorite haberdashery. This would often be at 2 or 3 o'clock in the
morning, when I am usually in deep thought. My favorite deep thought by the way is
that one day, somehow, I will do something - something BIG - and then everybody
will finally recognize what a great guy I am. Anyway, once Dr. Al-Jamie has taken
his shoes off and sat down on the special chair I keep for his visits, and after
remembering that I don't have a coffee machine, he will usually say, "Come on
Steve, let's go down to Denny's." As we step onto the street there will be, nine
times out of ten, half a dozen policemen nervously whizzing about this huge, black
foreign-made double-parked car, the one with the flags on the front fender that
frolic in the wind. These men will then salute Dr. Al-Jamie, before continuing
their patrol. We then drive the 30 meters to Denny's and order two bottomless
cups of coffee - one for each of us - before trading the latest stories about the
movers and shakers of this city.
Now, turn the pages and enjoy the articles in this issue, including what the people
who move and shake Tokyo have to say about the glass ceiling or women in the
workplace.

Stephan Hauser