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List of free articles, paid subscriber articles and PDFs, and more!

Welcome to Tokyo Calling

Tokyo Calling is a newsletter about culture, travel, urban exploration, the joys of slow life, and all things Japanese, of course.

Here you will find interviews, original articles and essays by me, Gianni Simone.

I am a Japan-based writer from Italy who regularly contributes to many English, Italian and French publications including The Japan Times, Zoom Japon, Vogue Italia and Playboy Italia.

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Tokyo Calling content

From politics to sports, travels and culture in all its forms, I regularly cover every aspect of Japanese society. I also blog about otaku culture at Otaku Tokyo.

So far, Tokyo Calling has featured, among other things, stories and interviews about Japanese music

La La La Love Song

immigration and refugees

Keep Out

Tokyo cinemas

The last picture show

interesting Tokyo neighborhoods

Geisha eating croissants

the sex industry

The water margin

and even my close encounter with COVID-19

Coronation Street

All these articles are free.

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Premium content for paid subscribers

If you like what I do and would like to support my newsletter, please consider choosing a paid subscription. Apart from earning bonus Karma points and my everlasting gratitude, you will be rewarded will exclusive access to special content. Not only that: paying subscribers can download free PDFs of books related to the subjects I cover in Tokyo Calling.

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1. Premium Articles

The following are the projects that I’m going to share with my paid subscribers:

• Greetings, dispatches from my home and surroundings in the deep Yokohama suburbs, with plenty of photos, diary entries, quotes, excerpts, and social commentary. Here’s a unique chance to learn about Japan not from academic essays but “frontline” posts that show you what it’s like to live here.

• The Great Indoors, inspired by Xavier de Maistre’s Voyage around My Room and the COVID-19 pandemic, is a travelogue of sorts where instead of travelling to exotic countries or engaging in urban exploration, I explore my house. This project is part domestic travelogue, part memoir (I look back at my life and the path I’ve walked so far) and part pop sociology (I discuss what in my opinion is good and bad about life in Japan).

• Faraway, So Close, on the other hand, is a classic travelogue where I chronicle my “circumnavigation” of Japan. This is an ongoing project as every year I’m taking about 7-10 days to explore a different region. I started in 2019 and will hopefully finish my travels in 2023, after which I’m going to share my findings with you.

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2. PDFs

You can also download subscriber-only PDFs:

My works:

• Made of This

• Tokyo Calling: Year One

On Japan:

• A Companion to Japanese History

• Multiethnic Japan

• Yakuza: Japan’s Criminal Underworld

• Bad Girls of Japan

• Tokyo Ueno Station

Otaku Special:

• Introduction to Japanese Horror Film

• Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts

• The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture

• Tokyo Geek’s Guide (by Gianni Simone)

• Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke

• Monster Attack Team issue 11

• Game Traders Live November 2014 issue (Nintendo Special)

Depending on your subscription plan, you can get two, four, or seven books for free.

For more details, check out this post (scroll down to the free book sections).

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Join Tokyo Calling today!

Please consider supporting my newsletter and joining our community.

In addition to accessing interesting content, you are directly supporting my efforts to run this newsletter, fund my research trips, develop content for several publications, and ideally provide support to other writers.

Thank you for your support! It truly means the world to me, and I will do my best to provide you with as much high value content as possible.

Until next time,

Gianni