Covering Tokyo since 1992, Julian Ryall says he’s “so happy” in Japan he’d be “mad to leave.” Originally from London, his background in international relations and his natural wanderlust fueled his interest in reporting abroad. Today he contributes regularly to The Telegraph, The South China Morning Post and The Hollywood Reporter (all in different time zones) and writes upwards of a dozen stories a week. Though he touts his inability to remember Japanese grammar rules, Ryall looks past the language and customs barriers to the beauty of being his own boss.
Tell us about your background. Where is home?
I was born in London but moved to the rural southwest of the UK at the age of 11. I went to Wolverhampton Polytechnic to read politics, international relations, Russian and French (all of which I have forgotten). I spent a year at a university in the south of France, in the town of Aix-en-Provence, which I blame for not wanting to subsequently live in Britain ever again. I had to return to do a one-year master’s in journalism at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, where we had to complete the courses provided by the National Council for the Training of Journalists. A year in France had given me wanderlust, so I decided to travel for one year to earn some cash and pay off my student debts before returning to the UK to get back into the profession in the traditional way — [through a] local paper [or] agency, Fleet Street, possibly.
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Why Japan?
I chose Japan because it was pretty much as far as I could get from Britain without ending up in a country with a similar culture and language to the UK, such as Australia. I never realized there were journalism opportunities where I arrived to teach; within two days I knew I was a terrible teacher and was looking around for journalism jobs. I wrote some freelance stuff before being in the right place at the right time when The Japan Times was hiring. That was 1992, and I stayed with them until I returned to the UK in 1998, intending to “settle down.” I joined The Times but knew after six months that I wanted to get back to Japan. I got back out here in 1999 and have been here ever since. I initially rejoined The Japan Times but went freelance in 2004 and have been very happy ever since. I live in Yokohama, which is only an hour south of central Tokyo.
Which publications do you contribute to, and how regularly?
I’m the Tokyo correspondent for The Telegraph [in] London, the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and The Hollywood Reporter in LA. I write for them at least a couple of times a week, on average. It’s not as tough as it sounds as they are all in very different time zones.
I write for dozens of other places as well, although they are mostly magazines and it is usually on a monthly basis — the Japan Airlines magazine [Skyward], the American Chamber of Commerce magazine, Cosmopolitan, Review Asia, et cetera, et cetera. I’m also linked to an agency in the UK called International News Services and they ask me to provide copy on a fairly regular basis; it’s mostly trade and industry publications, so I’m working on a 2,000 word piece at the moment on safety issues in Japan’s nuclear power industry and completed one a couple of days ago on the cosmetics market for the mature sector of the market. Not wildly exciting, but they pay the bills.
| The beauty of it all is that I never know what stories I’m going to be writing tomorrow and that never gets dull. |
How did you get your foot in the door? Any interesting anecdotes about first starting out?
The Telegraph gig came about when their previous correspondent left to write a book last year. I had covered for him for a couple of years when he was away so it was a pretty natural and smooth transition. Similarly, I’d been writing for the South China Morning Post for several years, submitting features, when their correspondent left, so I took that on. And the Hollywood Reporter job came to me through a paper in Ireland that I wrote for; the features editor there knew that they were looking for someone out here as his brother is a senior editor in LA. So as you can see, complete chance in all three cases.
I think it’s just a case of having what you know is a good story, finding out the name of the person you need to pitch it to and doing it. Pick up the phone, tell the person that you’re sure he/she is busy so you’re going to send him/her an email with a pitch, and then send it straight away. Don’t keep them on the phone to explain it, but do make the effort to speak to them; it makes it harder to ignore the email.
Working overseas for a major news organization is a dream job for many of us. Does the dream match the reality?
When I was a kid, my dad — who is a London taxi driver — told me that I should do a job that I really enjoyed because I’d have to do it for a long, long time. He’s not the deepest of thinkers, but he was absolutely spot-on. I’m very lucky to do what I do — and I know that I owe a lot of that to my parents, who put up with me as a stroppy [Britspeak for “ill-tempered”] teenager and helped finance me through five years of university. I certainly wouldn’t be doing this now if it wasn’t for their support.
Yes, this is the best job I could ever hope to have. I can’t imagine doing anything different. I’d say that 90 percent of mornings, I wake up and think to myself, “Great, I’ve got to go to work!” How many people are lucky enough to say that about their jobs?
I’ve interviewed film stars and authors, football players and politicians, singers and ordinary people with extraordinary tales. The beauty of it all is that I never know what stories I’m going to be writing tomorrow and that never gets dull.
What are the best and worst things about your job? Your biggest challenge?
The toughest thing remains the language; I’m not a natural linguist and it comes hard, but I can get by. I know it should be better than this after 15 years, but I keep plugging away at it!
| [Starting out as a journalist] takes a lot of self-belief and gumption, but it will pay off. |
What unique challenges do you face reporting in Japan? Do you think it’s easier to do your job here as compared to Britain or other parts of Asia?
It wasn’t really a conscious decision to come to Japan — as I said, it was more a desire to get as far away from England as possible and to try something completely different.
The language remains an obstacle, along with some curious cultural differences between journalists here and where I was trained. Here, the press doesn’t really ask many questions and is rarely truly hostile. In the UK, the royal family is fair game for the tabloids; here they’re untouchables and any magazine or paper that writes anything negative about them sees its advertising revenues drop and right-wingers mailing bullets to the editor (I kid you not).
Dealing with PR types here can be a nightmare, even when you’re trying to produce a positive story about their company or organization. They’re more like gatekeepers of the company than promoters of the good things that it is trying to do. That’s frustrating.
On the plus side, us foreigners are cut an awful lot of slack here; the Japanese accept that we can’t be expected to know or abide by all their customs or niceties, so they just shrug when we make social or professional faux pas.
What is the hot story in Japan right now?
At the moment, the family of a British woman who was murdered one year ago is top of the news agenda. Lindsay Hawker was a 22-year-old teacher who was beaten for 36 hours by her abductor before being strangled. The guy, a Japanese [man] called Ichihashi, escaped from the police and has been on the run for one year. The police appear to be clueless and the family have traveled to Japan to try to raise the profile of the case again. It’s a tough story because they’re just ordinary people in a terrible situation.
I interviewed them yesterday and I have to go to a vigil this evening. Looks like it might be a late night by the time I send the story over.
How accessible is Japan to foreign journalists? Are sources at all hesitant to give information to foreign journalists vs. local journalists? Would this be different in Britain?
I actually think it’s quite easy once you have made good contacts in all the places that you’re going to need them. After all this time, I have the names and numbers of people at all the ministries, plenty of universities and companies, think tanks, etc. that I know I can go to for a comment. That makes life easier.
Of course, there is always the magazine that phones up from the UK and asks me to interview the emperor tomorrow without the slightest inkling that it’s utterly impossible. Things work differently here and there is often little appreciation of that. I also had a foreign desk reporter in the UK ask why I couldn’t get to Xian in the next hour or so and was stunned to find that it was in a completely different country.
What was your most recent story? And your favorite story?
I write on average 12 stories a week and, in my busiest week, once turned out 33 pieces. Hopefully I won’t have to do that again soon. This morning I completed a feature piece for the South China Morning Post about the British family out here to look for their daughter’s killer. And I guess the story that I still get a kick out of was the one where I went looking for the fabled World War II treasure of General Yamashita in the jungles of the southern Philippines. That was an adventure.
Do you pitch ideas to your clients, or take assignments? What is the ratio? Has that changed as you’ve worked longer there? How do you get ideas for your stories?
For the Post, Telegraph, and Reporter, I pitch a list of three or four pieces that I think they might be interested in. Sometimes they take nothing; usually it’s one or two. On exceptional days I’ll get three. They also come to me with stories they have seen elsewhere and want followed up and updated. Magazines usually come to me now as they know my name. Some of the big publishers have a database of writers in any given territory and that’s available to all their titles. So from a Cosmopolitan story, I might get a request from Fish Farming Monthly.
I think that often an editor finds it very hard to have a writer in a far-flung part of the world, so they hang on to ones who they can rely on. And I would say that being reliable — turning in what you’ve been asked to provide and on time — is almost more important than being able to write scintillating prose. Their sub-editors can do that for you and knock raw copy into their style for publication; you need to get the story to them in the first place and on time. Nothing drives editors to distraction more than late copy, in my experience.
In the States, I would email the appropriate editor with a short pitch and follow up with an email and/or phone call. Have you found a format that works better in Japan?
I’m not actually sure how it would work for Japanese publications as I already have my links with them and they’re all English-language publications — although they are sometimes translated into Japanese. I know the editors personally now, and they just email me with a story they want, a deadline and a word count.
What is the best way for an unknown writer to get an assignment?
In my experience, editors are always open to approaches to ideas for stories, but they have to be packaged correctly. The travel editor of The Times once told me that she received dozens of unsolicited stories every day — and that most of them were very poor. It was people who had been on holiday and thought they would write about what they had done. She told me that she read the first three lines; if it hadn’t grabbed her by then, it was never going to. So you get three lines.
I don’t dislike a cold call to an editor — just keep it very brief (as mentioned above) and tell them that you will send a fuller outline by email. Have a clear outline of what you want to do with the piece; offer photos to accompany it, if possible — and make sure you deliver if they take you up on the offer.
Can you give us an idea of your typical day?
OK, well, today I got up at 5.15 a.m., [slept on] the train into central Tokyo and went to the gym for an hour. Then I went to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan where they have library facilities and a working room. It’s very convenient for when I need to work in Tokyo — plus it has a decent bar. I had a one-hour Japanese lesson from 9 a.m. and once again shocked my teacher at my ability to forget the simplest of grammar points.
Back in the workroom, I wrote the 600-word feature on the family who are searching for their daughter’s killer for the SCMP, I’ve been trying to pin down some movie companies about the titles they are sending to Cannes, with little luck so far. I have set up a meeting for 5.30 p.m. with a guy from the public broadcaster NHK to talk about a new show that they will begin in April; I’ll have to write that story pretty quickly, although it’s only short.
There’s a court case today involving a Japanese man who killed a British woman back in 2000 (another case, not the same as above) and I’ll have to find out how that went and then file a short-ish story, maximum 300 words. The family who have come to Japan are having a vigil in the bar where their daughter used to drink, so I have to go there with a photographer from 8 p.m. to talk to the parents and find out what the police told them today and the state of the investigation. (Update: The vigil with the family got a little rowdy, with dozens of Japanese journalists and TV crews in a very small bar. I’d heard a whisper earlier in the day that the father of the only suspect in the killing had committed suicide, so I pulled the father out of earshot of the other UK reporters and put it to him. I got some reaction and got a front-page exclusive for The Telegraph. By the time I got home, wrote the piece and then got to bed it was 2.15 a.m. Still, a good day.)
I have also spent much of the day swearing at my computer as it has apparently given up on me.
Do you work in an office or out of your home? How often are you traveling?
I split my time between home and the club; I generally start the week at home and get a lot of work done when there are fewer distractions. By Wednesday, I’ve got cabin fever and I need to bother someone, so I go to the club and get a lot less work done. But at least I’m sociable.
I do get to travel with work and these last couple of months have been pretty busy: I was in Hokkaido, in the far north of Japan, in early March, followed by 10 days in Vietnam and Cambodia and five days covering the film festival in Hong Kong. I was meant to be in South Korea in April but that looks to have fallen through.
I’ve managed to wangle a few good trips — North Korea in 2002, Iwo Jima in late 2006, the soccer World Cup in South Korea in 2002 come to mind. One of the beauties of being your own boss is that you can pick and choose the good stuff.
When did you know that you wanted to be a journalist? What, if anything, would you have done differently?
In the summer of 1982, Britain went to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. I can still remember listening to Robert Fox and Brian Hanrahan of the BBC reporting from the conflict and thinking that was what I wanted to do. It seemed so exciting, so out-of-the-ordinary. And no, I don’t think there is much I would have done differently in terms of my career. But if we’re talking about my personal life, then how many pages do you have?
Any advice for journalists who are just starting out?
Choose a country that is under-represented in the global media coverage, go there and set yourself up as a correspondent. If you have the basic skills, it is easy as that. It takes a lot of self-belief and gumption, but it will pay off. It may take a while and you may end up doing something in the meantime that you never planned to, but it will be worth it in the long term. And if anyone is thinking of coming to Japan, you might be shocked at how much work there is available. I passed the notice board at the FCCJ this evening and there were five adverts for reporters or editorial assistants. Obviously, the language is a major bonus, but it’s not everything. I’m not sure what other advice I can offer, but I’m on jryall2@hotmail.com if anyone is thinking of taking the plunge and coming to Japan.
What next?
I’m here for the long haul; I’m divorced, but I have two young children — 9 and 5 — that I get to see every weekend and turn the house upside down with. To be honest, work is so good and I’m so happy in this culture that I would be mad to leave it and try to start over. I get back to Europe once a year to see family and friends, and that’s sufficient. My life is here and I’m very comfortable. And I know I’m very lucky.
Ryall’s do’s and don’ts of being a foreign correspondent:
1. Set up camp. Choose a country that is under-represented in the global media coverage, go there and set yourself up as a correspondent. If you have the basic skills, it is easy as that. It takes a lot of self-belief and gumption, but it will pay off.
2. You get three lines. “The travel editor of The Times once told me that she received dozens of unsolicited stories every day — and that most of them were very poor. It was people who had been on holiday and thought they would write about what they had done�. She told me that she read the first three lines; if it hadn’t grabbed her by then, it was never going to.
3. Pick up the phone. “Tell the person that you’re sure he/she is busy so you’re going to send him/her an email with a pitch, and then send it straight away. Don’t keep them on the phone to explain it, but do make the effort to speak to them; it makes it harder to ignore the email.”
4. Follow up. “Have a clear outline of what you want to do with the piece; offer photos to accompany it, if possible — and make sure you deliver if they take you up on the offer.”
5. Don’t be late. “Turning in what you’ve been asked to provide and on time is almost more important than being able to write scintillating prose. Nothing drives editors to distraction more than late copy.”
Jen Swanson is a freelance writer based in New York City. Her work has appeared in Transitions Abroad, Weissmann Travel Reports, and Star Service Online.
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