This month is the tenth anniversary of Fukuoka Now, and to mark our 120th consecutive issue we present a special celebration of the magazine, and the city and community it serves. The slogan with which we started a decade ago was “What-Where-When-Fukuoka Now”, and that concept hasn’t changed much over the years. So in addition to this month’s celebrations we’ll be providing the usual mix of information and comment, letting you know what to see, where to be and how best to enjoy Fukuoka.The future looks bright for the city and the magazine, and you may have already heard some of our plans to expand in our second decade, beginning with a city map for foreigners this March. We hope friends of Fukuoka and visitors alike will join us in wishing themselves and Fukuoka Now many happy returns!
This month’s very special ‘Gekkan Gaijin’ tells the story of international publishing in Fukuoka from the unique perspective of Nick Szasz, founder and publisher of FN. Nick is a Toronto native who’s lived in Japan for 23 years. Nick’s work has made him a prominent figure in the City’s business and tourism communities and a familiar face around international hangouts. Nick’s contribution to community and internationalization in the area was officially recognized when he was awarded the Fukuoka Prefecture Culture award in 2006.
First things first, how did you end up in Japan?
I first came to Japan for the first time by boat, the ferry from Nahoka to Yokohama. After I finished university I’d saved up enough money to travel, and instead of going to Europe where my family roots lay I decided to go to Asia. Not knowing Baghdad from Bombay, or from Bangkok, to tell the truth. I probably couldn’t have put any of those on a map but I just decided to go to Asia because I wanted something different. I started in London and went over the Trans-Siberian. Coming out of the then-Soviet Union, my first impressions of Japan were… disappointment isn’t the right word, but I was looking for the India in what I imagined, saris and thongs and so forth. But even then in Japan people wore jeans and polo shirts, just like back in Toronto! For a backpacker everything was expensive, and I didn’t want to spend too long in Japan before I hit “real Asia”. So I moved on. Fast-forward through traveling in South-East Asia, because I think the change really came when I went to Nepal. I had heard there was a place outside Kathmandu which had courses for foreigners interested in Tibetan Buddhism. Now, I was pretty much an atheist. My family had never been religious, and I was… I guess a smartass who thought he had the world under control. But I think traveling through Asia was humbling, seeing people with very little who were still smiling, people far poorer than me still helping me out. I was as much against “new religion” as old religion, but I got a cool vibe from this place: there were people from all over the world, University professors and all kinds. So I signed up for a four-week course. It was full-on, a lot of lectures but also a lot of sitting still, and suddenly someone who’d never been interested in the spiritual side of anything was questioning all kinds of things. To cut a long story short I became very interested in Asia, and Asia became a great teacher. I came back to Canada and worked at my father’s firm, and probably sold a few things, and then I went and did it all again, for another nine months in almost the same countries. But this time I was more focused, and very interested in Buddhism, in Burma, Nepal and India. And this was back frankly when backpackers were still cool, when they had some integrity. I heard that Japan had Buddhist schools, and there was also English teaching to support yourself, so I thought hey, why not? I moved into a Zen temple in Shinagawa-ku in Tokyo. It was a small and quite poor temple, but very serious. It was all taught in Japanese, but fortunately you don’t have to know much Japanese in order to follow Zen, you can learn by example: sit there, don’t move. That was a bit shy of a year.
How did you come to Fukuoka?
Well, by the time I left the temple I had started to drift from the study of Buddhism, but I was looking for a reason to stay in to Japan, so I started learning the language. I worked as a salariman in Japanese companies in Tokyo and Osaka. By the time I came to Fukuoka in 1990 I was pretty proficient. I came to interview for a job I wanted with a company which specialized in producing Japanese versions of software titles for Apple computers. Compared to Tokyo and Osaka it was a smaller city, but with subways and so on, and the Dome was just being built. It was very much a city, but definitely smaller, more comfortable. I started putting down roots, and wanting to take part in the community, and that was the start of what I consider Fukuoka Now.
What role did you hope FN would play in the city?
FN started because we realized the need for people like myself who can’t or don’t read kanji to get information about the city. I think Rainbow Plaza and other government efforts have done a good job in providing lifeline information to foreigners: how to pay your water bill, how to get legal representation. But when it comes to what’s on this weekend, how and where to enjoy an onsen, enjoying Fukuoka, there was very little information. And I thought that was equally important. I wanted that information for myself, and people around me wanted it, and of course I saw a business opportunity. I never thought of it as a way to become rich. There were few foreigners then and there aren’t that many now. If I’d spent the hours I’ve spent on the magazine teaching English I’d be a wealthy person! Of course I was a foreigner, so I was well placed to provide what our audience wanted. But I had lived in Japan for several years by then, with no intention of leaving, and was searching for my reason for being there. And from my experiences with RADAR I realized I could be of use to people. Once in a while we hear that FN has helped someone find a job, helped someone find a friend or a restaurant or something to do, or even- several times- a spouse. And that’s the real buzz in this job – being useful.
Do you think Fukuoka Now has changed its approach or its aims over the years?
I think our original intention has remained pretty constant, providing timely and accurate information to help people enjoy Fukuoka. In recent years we’ve branched out more into events co-ordination, and through the FN events we see people meeting, making friends and associations. I think, or hope, the magazine has also served as an example of what foreigners can do in the city. The magazine wasn’t set up by the government, it was started and run by one foreigner. And I hope that people may have seen that and it’s given them the confidence to start their own business in the city. And lastly we’re often told by advertisers that they wouldn’t have a media to advertise in if it wasn’t for us, so we’ve helped them to develop their business. The foreign population are an interesting target audience, because many of those people are considered opinion leaders. Many of our readers are teachers, some with hundreds or even thousands of students, and we often hear from advertisers that a group of students had used the magazine in classes, or talked about events in the magazine with their teacher. We have had hard over the years, times we’ve been in the red. We don’t get money from the government, and our staff have had to work hard to get content in, and to go out and find advertisers. To supplement the work we branched out into other services almost from day one. We provide design, translation and proofreading expertise to small and large local companies and Government agencies, and fortunately many of our clients have been with us for many years, and we’d like to thank them for their continued custom. I think we can say with confidence that we’ve provided a good service over the years. And we’re not slowing down: we’ve got big plans for the future, you bet.”
