Javier García Wong-Kit
@JaviernestoJavier García Wong-Kit is a journalist, professor, and director of Otros Tiempos magazine. Author of Tentaciones narrativas (Redactum, 2014) and De mis cuarenta (ebook, 2021), he writes for Kaikan, the magazine of the Japanese Peruvian Association.
Updated April 2022
Stories from This Author
Leonardo Oyakawa: cooking his way
July 13, 2022 • Javier García Wong-Kit
When he lived in Lima, no arrow or sign indicated to him that the path to his professional future would be in the kitchen. Although he liked to make desserts, as soon as he finished school he moved to Florida, United States, and started working as a cashier at a gas station. “My first experience in the kitchen was as a waiter, when the Peruvian Nikkei chef Oscar Noborikawa invited me to see how he prepared sushi.” His skill with …
Three Nikkei in digital trades
May 23, 2022 • Javier García Wong-Kit
In recent years, various jobs have emerged that meet the needs of a market full of websites, social networks and online products that will require a series of professionals (communicators, designers and content generators) who are could be grouped into a flexible category: the new digital trades (although in reality they involve much more). These three Peruvian Nikkei show part of the great diversity of functions and qualities required to make a place for themselves in this labor market. * …
Nicole Higa Kobashigawa: Volunteer by Vocation
April 27, 2022 • Javier García Wong-Kit
If professional volunteerism were a career, Nicole Higa Kobashigawa might have chosen it. As a student at La Unión school in Lima, she excelled in all subjects, from math to physical education (she even learned to walk on stilts and juggle in a circus workshop). But she wasn’t focused on any subject in particular. That is, until sixth grade, when she volunteered for a leadership program to learn about teamwork and soft skills. She attended the program every Saturday morning …
Jaime Ajito: Ambassador of Nikkei Cuisine
April 15, 2022 • Javier García Wong-Kit
If cuisine is a way to travel around the world, Peruvian chef Jaime Ajito has been an ambassador of Nikkei cuisine on two continents. Nikkei cuisine is what he learned at home and culinary school after studying graphic design and marketing and working as a dental technician, with his own laboratory. He’s also spent time as a dekasegi in Japan. Today he lives in Bahrain, an island in the Persian Gulf between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, where these days you …
Nikkeis inspired by video games
March 16, 2022 • Javier García Wong-Kit
Technology has been the reason for great advances in humanity and, in recent years, digital tools have become an engine of change in many areas. This inspiring capacity has infected many people for several decades, including some Nikkei who have developed their careers based on these advances, which today include smartphones, virtual stores and video games, among other useful and revolutionary products. In Peru, the first news of technological inventions came through the press, TV and radio, but, since the …
The sweet side of Peruvian Nikkei cuisine
Feb. 21, 2022 • Javier García Wong-Kit
It can be said that the popularity of Peruvian Nikkei cuisine is now indisputable. From makis and their fusions with Creole ingredients, to other preparations that have been gaining ground with restaurants and events in the Peruvian-Japanese community (in the former, ramen soups have become known and in the latter, obento have been introduced), Nikkei cuisine dishes are increasingly on the lips of more Peruvians and tourists. In recent years, motivated by reinvention, which drove many Nikkei towards entrepreneurship, and …
New winds in Peruvian Nikkei poetry - Part 2
Jan. 7, 2022 • Javier García Wong-Kit
Read part 1 >> Poetry is plastic. At least that can be deduced from some of the collections of poems that some Nikkei have published in recent years. Disparate editions, poems based on real events, self-published poets and loose verses on social networks also show the winds that carry poetic work towards new directions. The survival of some contests and awards emerges as one of the few incentives in the face of the pandemic crisis that has undermined the entire …
New winds in Peruvian Nikkei poetry - Part 1
Dec. 6, 2021 • Javier García Wong-Kit
Nikkei poetry has a long history in Peru, starting with classic authors such as José Watanabe or Doris Moromisato, whose collections of poems date back to the seventies and eighties. In subsequent years, other authors such as Juan de la Fuente Umetsu have followed an aesthetic with a notable Japanese influence, the same that has inspired other Peruvian poets without Japanese ancestry such as Diego Sánchez Barreto and Alonso Belaunde Degregori, who are closer to haiku. In recent times, Nikkei …
Brief history of a Nikkei videographer
Nov. 1, 2021 • Javier García Wong-Kit
Harumi López Higa is only 26 years old, but has a long life story that she has been able to summarize in a short film that has brought her early but unanimous recognition. The video Spring Sea , which refers to the meaning of its name, was selected among the 50 best short films at the 12th International Inter University Short Film Festival Bangladesh 2020. And it has continued to receive distinctions. It has been a short path, in time, …
The crossed paths of Peruvian and Japanese literature
Sept. 1, 2021 • Javier García Wong-Kit
Geographic distance has not been a reason to separate the literary creation of two countries as dissimilar as Peru and Japan, whose real stories have fueled those of fiction. Writers and academics have looked at the crossed paths of these nations, finding themes, coincidences and other curiosities from migration. Japanese professor Shigeko Mato is a student of both literatures and has specialized in analyzing their subtle encounters. She says that her professors at the University of New Mexico, in the …
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