I can think of no better intro for my first Times of Israel Blog post than this: at the Avishai Cohen show at Blue Note Tokyo, everyone tip-tapp-head-bopping and a Japanese man enthusiastically yelling, “Shalom” as the jazz great and his quintet enter the club. 

The audience is peppered with Israelis, even at my table, where the server mistakes an Israeli’s drink request of a margarita for the pizza. Thirty minutes later, she comes back and apologizes–they are out of margherita–how about another pizza?

Here, apart from some innocent gaffes and miscommunication, Israelis experience a kind of liberation. And not just from this lookout at The Blue Note, where Avishai has been coming for the last decade. I’m speaking from my three years of hosting Israelis in Japan. I think of our WhatsApp groups with Israeli locals, our growing Friday night Shishi events, Israelis in Japan Facebook groups, and the constant stream of Israelis DMing our guest house Instagram – all this, despite the steady stream of biased news from BBC and Al Jazeera comprising our public Japanese international news coverage. Here in Japan, Israelis and Jews get a break. 

We are on vacation from much of the alarming discrimination and growing tension surrounding the frequency of antisemitic attacks in Europe, Australia, and the US (though one recent guest had been on Bondi Beach during the horrendous attack). They all come with their own trauma and PTSD, whether their sister’s bedroom was hit in Ashkelon, their dear sister survived Nova or didn’t (we’ve hosted both), or they come from K’far Aza or Kibbutz Be’eri. The stickers line our shoe closet and now, a book with washi pages. We talk late at night over Japanese whisky, some Bamba, sakura mochi, and Shlomo Artzi. Sometimes it’s over a plate of hummus. The exact details don’t matter; they tell me they feel at home and free here.

Japan may be one of the last ports of........

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