Welcome to a Global Voice From Japan — The Fushigi Instinct
A Slow Media project from Tokyo, offering bold, reality-grounded perspectives on global affairs, cultural explorations, and creative thought.
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Listen to the audio version, narrated by Angelino Schintu: COMING SOON…
What’s in a Name?
When Fushigi Labs launched this publication, we weren’t looking for a name that explained itself. We weren’t looking for clarity, efficiency, or “keyword optimisation.” In fact, we leaned into the opposite. We chose mystery. Or rather, we chose Fushigi.
We chose a word that resists tidy translation, because we believe ideas worth exploring often resist it too.
ふしぎ is a Japanese word that slips through translation. It can mean mysterious, uncanny, wondrous. But even those feel like approximations. Fushigi is a feeling — the sense that something doesn’t quite fit into what you know. It makes you lean forward, squint slightly, ask questions. That lean? That’s curiosity. And that’s what this publication is built on.
Fushigi captures the spark that flickers in a child's eyes the first time they see snowfall, or the pause you take when a phrase in a foreign language says something better than your own. It is the sense of standing at the threshold of insight, where logic alone cannot explain the feeling. And crucially, it’s not about arriving at the destination, the end of the journey. It’s about continuing to look when you think you might have.
We weren’t chasing cleverness. We were chasing resonance.
Fushigi is not about answers. It’s about paying attention.
It’s the instinct that pulls you off the main road, into the alley. That pause before the plot makes sense. The little hum in the air when something doesn’t compute. That, for us, is the real signal. That’s where stories start. And for many of us, that sense of wonder — once dismissed as naïve — is now our compass.
Why Slow Media, and Why Now?
Let’s face it: media isn’t exactly having a golden age. There’s more content than ever, but somehow less substance. More noise, less resonance. We live in a time that rewards certainty — instant opinions, hot takes, dopamine-driven flick-scrolls. Everything is fast, reactive, and constantly re-optimising for your attention.
But beneath all that motion is a deeper hunger. A desire to slow down, reflect, feel something beyond the headline. That’s where Slow Media comes in. Not just slow for the sake of being slow — but slow as a form of resistance. Intentional, careful, human.
We’re not anti-technology. We’re anti-hyper.
The Slow Media movement is about restoring dignity to the pace of thought. It’s not nostalgic, but it is sceptical. Sceptical of constant optimisation, of informational sugar highs, of storytelling stripped of soul.
In recent years, more readers have grown tired of the churn. “Content fatigue” is real, and it’s measurable — attention spans are collapsing under the weight of speed. Academic studies and user data alike point to rising anxiety, lowered comprehension, and burnout from constant feeds. We believe the antidote isn’t silence — it’s depth.
At The Fushigi Times, we believe the slow read is the real read. The one that makes you underline a sentence or pause to breathe before you continue. The kind you return to days later and still find meaning in.
Speed is for machines. Meaning takes time.
This is why our format privileges thought over trend. We’re not reactive — we’re reflective. Whether it's a meditation on the symbolism of post-war design or a dispatch from a city in flux, the focus remains the same: telling stories that allow for breathing space.
PARTNERSHIP OPPORTUNITY
This Slow Media content is supported by [YOUR ORGANISATION NAME HERE]
The Fushigi Times is committed to offering thoughtful, independent, reality-grounded perspectives on global affairs, cultural explorations, and creative thought—made possible with the occasional support from like-minded partners.
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The Fushigi Approach
We write about global affairs, culture, and creative thought — not to tell you what to think, but to explore what’s possible. Some of our stories are grounded in international reporting. Others lean into philosophy, aesthetics, or the occasional historical rabbit hole. What ties it all together is tone: bold but nuanced, witty but serious, sarcastic when needed, but never cynical. Think FT Weekend or The Atlantic with a touch of C.S. Lewis — curious, profound, and full of wonder.
And yes, there will be footnotes. Possibly even parentheticals. Definitely curious maps.
Our editorial choices are global in scope, but rooted in Tokyo — a city that feels like a living contradiction. Where seasonal shrines exist two blocks from an AI-powered capsule hotel. That paradox? We live with it, question it, and reimagine it daily. It isn't just the backdrop — it's the tension that shapes how we see and what we say. And the other side of that coin? We regularly escape the Tokyo city lights, heading to the country-sea rhythm of the Pacific Coast in Chiba — where everything slows down into the kind of Blue Zone lifestyle many crave but rarely touch: unhurried, embodied, quietly radiant.
We believe that journalism should provoke thought, not just emotion. Curiosity matters more than the grip of clickbaity nonsense.
Our contributors come from backgrounds in journalism, filmmaking, architecture, fashion, and the arts. We believe the most compelling stories emerge where disciplines intersect. A piece on Iran’s 1979 revolution — imagined as a Back to the Future-style alternate 1985 — might reference French cinema of the 1960s. An essay on AI might begin with a haiku.
Whether we’re covering the geopolitics of rare earth metals in Africa or Central Asia or the sociology of Kyoto café culture, we aim for the same goal: to tell stories that stretch your thinking without snapping your patience.
Curiosity as Method
Most media today confuses curiosity with consumption. Click, skim, swipe, repeat! We think real curiosity is slower, more durable. It’s the thing that makes you linger on a sentence. Re-read a paragraph. Forward something to a friend with a “huh.”
Curiosity is not a data point. It’s a mindset.
The world isn’t suffering from a lack of information. It’s drowning in it. What’s scarce is context. Thoughtfulness. Sincerity. The ability to say, “We’re not sure yet — but here’s why we’re asking.”
Curiosity, in our view, is a muscle. One that atrophies under the weight of algorithmic certainty. So we’re here to exercise it — with wonder, with humour, with just the right amount of intellectual mischief.
A good question is worth more than a rushed answer.
We believe in cultivating the kind of attentiveness that goes beyond headlines. Reading, here, is not passive. It’s an act of co-creation — between writer and reader, insight and openness. The best kind of curiosity is the kind that loops back, that builds, that sustains.
This isn’t media as performance. This is media as process.
We don’t chase certainty. We sit with complexity.
Reality-Grounded, Not Reality-Doomed
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the state of the world. Climate crisis, data dystopias, culture wars that feel more like content strategies. But The Fushigi Times doesn’t exist to add to your despair. We’re grounded in reality — but reality isn’t always grim. It’s also absurd, beautiful, tragic, and filled with moments of wonder. Our job is to surface that wonder with integrity.
We traffic in perspective, not panic.
We’re interested in the edges — in what doesn’t get covered because it’s not trending. The stories hiding in plain sight. The “why” behind the “what.” We think these overlooked moments are where the world often reveals itself.
We may examine global shifts in power, but we’ll also pay attention to street-level humanity — how people mourn, eat, invent, adapt. We’ll cover macroeconomics and micro-joys in the same breath. We don’t flatten. We expand.
Yes, we’ll cover serious issues. But we’ll also explore the everyday marvels of life. The rituals of overlooked communities. The buried meanings in architecture. The sociology of vending machines. If it makes you pause and go “wait, what?” — it’s probably Fushigi material.
Our Invitation
If you feel the pull of that kind of curiosity — the kind that doesn’t flinch from complexity or contradiction — then you’re in the right place. We’re not here to explain the world. We’re here to dwell in its richness.
This publication is reader-supported. If you value what we’re building — a slower, more intentional, and deeply curious kind of media — consider subscribing. Free or paid, all are welcome.
Think of us less as a newsletter and more as a quiet revelation — the kind that suddenly opens into something exhilarating, like stumbling into an unexpected dinner party for your brain.
So pour yourself something. Scroll slowly. Read fully. And if you feel that fushigi instinct — that subtle lean towards the unknown — follow it!
Welcome to The Fushigi Times.
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Angelino Schintu is a veteran journalist, broadcaster, and filmmaker based in Japan. He is Editor-in-Chief of The Fushigi Times — an independent Slow Media platform offering bold, reality-grounded perspectives on global affairs, cultural explorations, and creative thought.
