Life
Year: 2010 Day Two: Akihabara Otaku Time Day two was my first real test of Japan.It was also my first time riding the Japanese train system. I could not read most of the signs. I had no Google Maps. Smartphones were not reliable yet, and data was expensive. All I had was a paper train
Year: 2010 My first trip to Japan was in the spring of 2010. I planned it as a 12-day trip, arriving on April 25 and leaving on May 8. It took me much longer than I expected to finally make that journey, but once I did, it changed everything. At the time, smartphones were not
There was a time when Crunchyroll didn’t look like the giant media company people know today. Long before acquisitions, corporate offices, and global strategy decks, it felt like a scrappy startup run by people who genuinely loved anime. I still have some old photos from those early days. Small office. Folding tables. Random cables everywhere.
When people look at my career today, they usually see what’s on the surface. Media and Entertainment. Gaming. Cloud Architecture. Creative technology. A long list of projects over the years. The question I get most often is simple: How did you get started? The honest answer is not what most people expect. It started with
Anime is bigger today than it has ever been. It’s global now. Streaming platforms, collaborations with major brands, conventions around the world, and panels at events like SXSW talking about how anime became a worldwide cultural force. Seeing those conversations happening on stages like that is interesting. It shows how far the medium has come.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the space between loving anime and working in it. For many people, anime is passion first, the stories, the art, the worlds, the community. For others, it’s a profession, production schedules, pipelines, localization, delivery, and operations. And for a small number of us, it’s both. That in-between space
Before I ever set foot in Japan, it was already part of my life. Growing up, Japanese culture was always present in my household. My dad was the biggest influence. He lived and worked in Japan during the 60s and 70s and often told stories about how amazing the country was. He was fluent in
Tofu Productions began from pure passion, but eventually the reality behind keeping it alive became harder to manage. What started as something fun slowly turned into something I couldn’t sustain. The biggest challenge was the workload after each shoot. I became the entire post-production team. I handled everything: digitizing, editing, creating graphics, designing DVD menus,
Tofu Productions, or Tofu Prod for short, started during a phase of my life when I was deep into video production. Around 2008, I was inspired by the content I was watching at the time: Option Videos and Best Motoring. Those two were the gold standard for drifting, gymkhana, touge battles, and everything related to
Feature Image: Photo from r/animevhs user – lookoutforlunch People often ask me how I started working in tech, media, and creative industries. The truth is, it did not begin with school or any formal training. It started much earlier, in a small and unexpected way. It started with anime. Back in middle school and through
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