English Business Letter Writing Handbook, Mathison et. al., Kenkyusha Ltd., 1988, 622 pages
    This bilingual reference book is now in its 5th edition. Over 400 samples of standard business correspondence are presented, with detailed explanations relating to grammar, usage, style and tone. Originally published as a companion volume to a best-selling PC program entitled “Applied Business Communications,” the handbook remains as a standard reference tool for Japanese business people at home and abroad.

Frequent Special Contributor, 1981-85, with over 30 news features published
    Wrote lengthy features for Japan’s largest English-language daily, several of which were translated into Japanese for sister publications while others were picked up by syndicated services. Covered sports, lifestyles, politics, food, technology, language, culture and, occasionally, breaking news. Was a regular columnist for a year in The Japan Times Weekly. When a former JT managing editor retired in the mid-eighties, he stated that this writer may well have been the only one in the paper’s 85-year history to have had a “signed article on every page.”

“Dallas Sushi—Something to Talk About” by Chris Mathison (Food) June 2000
    Several lives were risked for the sake of this story. Details within.
    My former Japan Times colleague, Rick Kennedy, doyen of Tokyo food critics, once wrote:
    “Good sushi cannot be made without exuberant interaction between the men behind the counter and their customers. This is why all great makers of sushi are unabashedly demonstrative and genuinely friendly people.”
    Having eaten sushi in nearly every country that serves it, I naturally wonder how pumped the counter jam is over here.
    A whirlwind tour results in a recurring theme: Dallas sushi is abundant, delicious, incredibly fresh and wonderfully innovative—because the city is landlocked and lacks Japanese.
    Huh? (full story)