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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)
“My Eternity—Praise the Lord Anyhow” by Chris Mathison
(Humor) First published in the Tokyo Journal in October 1983;
selected for best-of-decade issue in February 1989
Last night I dreamed I died and went to Japanese
teen heaven.
At first I thought I’d get along
fine since everyone at the heavenly arcade gate seemed to be speaking my
language, but soon discovered they were all yakking in a strange dialect
derived completely from shopping bags, stationery, T-shirts and TV commercials.
“Welcome to Club Heaven,” St. Peter
greeted me. “Please, let’s enjoy without thinking disgusting things. Become a
super hero of Team In. Because, when our hearts are free and young, fashion is
the way of the world.”
“Huh? Say, I’m new here. I don’t
quite understand.”
“Oh, I see, just a lonely boy in
town. Well, let me introduce you to some of the others.”
Standing beside him were three high-energy,
ultracute groovy guys. St. Peter beckoned me forward. (full story)
“Hallo, Hallo ... Estonia Calling” by Chris Mathison (Travel), Cover Story, Tokyo Journal, March 1989
Afterwards, we nicknamed it “Club KGB.” Now, obviously, here in Tallinn, what we’d stumbled into was a joint that serviced local espionage types straight out of central casting, not to mention all those gawking Helsinki weekenders who either know somebody, or know somebody who knows somebody. The place to watch and be watched.
Likewise to wine and dine. In delicious contrast to all the rubber chicken, rindy bread, rancid butter, rotten veggies and rotgut beverages we’d been staring glumly at throughout Siberia, down in the Central Asian Republics, high in the Caucasus, out at the Black Sea resorts, and even on the ornate tables of the finest restaurants Moscow and Leningrad supposedly had to offer, this dinner, tonight’s magnificent repast had been like total czar chow. (full story)
“Calling Dr. TRON” by Chris Mathison
(Computers) Cover Story, The Magazine (Tokyo), October 1988
It’s 6 p.m., I’m running late, Ken’s arriving for dinner in about twenty minutes,
and I’m feeling like nothing’s ready. True, plenty of snacks, hors d’oeuvres, beverages, entree’s, condiments and desserts were assembled days ago.
But these mundane details of the stomach do not concern me. And I seriously doubt whether Ken much cares about what the group will consume later on,
although undoubtedly he will notice whatever handy little microprocessors helped in preparing,
preserving and presenting tonight’s offerings. Many did.
“Hi, I’m a House” by Chris Mathison and Mark Dennin (Technology), Wingspan-the In-flight Magazine of All Nippon Airways, July 1989
Do houses have personalities? Of course they do. But seldom do they have a sense of humor like the house in this story. Though the following tale is purely imaginative—taking place in the near future as a conversation between two prospective buyers and an “intelligent” dwelling—it is based on the actual capabilities and facilities of a domecile soon to open in the Nishi-Azabu section of Japan’s capital city. The house can’t actually “talk.” But if it could ...
“Called Strike—Warren Cromartie’s Mean-spirited Memoir” by Chris Mathison (Books), Intersect-Japan and the World, October 1991
Serious fans of Japanese baseball automatically pick up and devour anything new that Robert Whiting offers on the subject.
In his first book, The Chrysanthemum and the Bat,
he accurately defined and chronicled Japan’s peculiar version of the American pastime.
In dozens of subsequent articles written for Sports Illustrated, Simthsonian, Penthouse and other publications,
Whiting further illuminated and elevated the topic.
In last year’s hugely successful You Gotta Have Wa,
he transcended sports altogether and gave us what David Halberstam summed up as “one of the best of all books on modern Japan.”
So, naturally, one grabs Slugging it out in Japan because Whiting has batted a thousand so far.
This time out, however, ex-Montral Expo/Yomiuri Giant Warren Cromartie is Whiting’s designated hitter—and Cromartie strikes out.
(full story)
“Marriage, Japanese Style” by Chris Mathison and Janelle Girdler (Lifestyle), Blue Swan-the In-flight Magazine of Aeroflot Airlines, February 1984
This time next year, 25-year-old Yoko Yuyama will be married. She has no idea what her future husband looks like or even what his name is, but she knows his approximate income, his background, his position in the company and his prospects for the future. She’s leaving all but the final selection up to her father’s best friend, who has been requested to arrange her marriage.
In Japan, there are nearly 750,000 marriages per year. Over 400,000 of these come about by omiai, a word which simply means “meeting” in Japanese. This term more accurately defines the modern development of an age-old custom than it does a popular, albeit misleading, English-language translation, “arranged marriage.”
