In November of 2016 Tony R. Vega started JapanKyo after noticing a vast and endless stream of interesting news and content coming out of Japan that was getting little to no coverage by English-language media. Using his expertise in the Japanese language, he began to report on these stories, focusing on the more outlandish content he came across. Thanks to his ability to find interesting content in Japanese-language media and accurately translate it into English before other media outlets, Tony Vega was able to turn Japankyo into a trusted source for odd and interesting news from Japan within just a few months.
Since its founding numerous stories broken by JapanKyo have spread around the world and been translated in many different languages. These stories have been cited by and reported on by a long list of major media outlets, including The Sun, NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Thump, Engadget, SoraNews24 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), Mandatory, Metro, Inquirer.net, Boing Boing, Newsweek, and many more. Japankyo articles have also been appearing in Wasabi magazine since the start of the publication in January of 2018 until it stopped publishing in 2020.
On November 1, 2018, JapanKyo expanded into the world of podcasting when it launched Japan Station. Hosted and produced by JapanKyo founder Tony R. Vega, Japan Station is released monthly. In each episode Tony R. Vega has a guest on to talk about Japan-related topics. To see a full list of episodes visit www.japanstationpodcast.com.
January of 2020 saw the launch of JapanKyo.com’s second podcast: Ichimon Japan: A Podcast About Japan and the Japanese Language. On this show Tony R. Vega and his co-host Ryan pose questions about Japan and the Japanese language and do their best to answer these sometimes unanswerable questions.
Tony R. Vega also produced a third Japan-focused podcast. Titled Japanese Plus Alpha, this show focuses exclusively on interesting quirks of the Japanese language. While it is no longer being produced, all the episodes are available for Patreon supporters contributing $3 a month or more..
In October of 2021, Tony R. Vega, along with Kyle Broyles of the Tokyo Splosion podcast and Hard Officers YouTube channel launched the YouTube channel JapanKyo Docs. Together they produced a series of short documentaries focusing on people in Japan doing interesting and unique things.
In September of 2023 Tony R. Vega embarked on a walk from Kyoto to Tokyo that spanned 29 days and roughly 500 km. Dubbed the Tokaido Challenge, Tony documented the journey in real time via videos and posts he released to his personal X/Twitter account. The goal of the Tokaido Challenge was to create captivating content that would both serve entertain and raise awareness of people with visual impairments (Tony Dot Vega is legally blind).
Social Media
To stay up to date with all Japan-related developments, please follow on Facebook and Twitter. You can also follow Tony R. Vega on Twitter @TheVegaTony.
Contact
Do you have a question or comment? Do you have an idea for a story? Are you interested in contributing to JapanKyo? If so, then send an email to mail@japankyo.com.
