Lisa Katayama on Project Tofu, the new bootcamp for Japanese startups

If you’re interested in technology coming out of Asia at all, chances are, you’ve read something by Lisa Katayama. It might have been a story in Wired, the New York Times Magazine, or Boingboing. You may even have read her book, about the special lifehacks peculiar to Japan.

Beyond journalism, Katayama is starting a new project, an “experimental movement” that acts like a kind of startup accelerator for Japanese companies who want to scale globally.

Katayama has also been examining the impact of the devastating earthquake that struck Japan in March, and the role technology has played in the aftermath. It’s the subject of her talk at Echelon 2011.

You work on a lot of things; can you outline the main projects you’re focused on now?

Right now, I’m pouring most of my energy into The Tofu Project. The Tofu Project is an experimental movement — centered around a seven-day boot camp in the San Francisco Bay Area — that aims to help Japanese ideas and products scale globally by providing 10 exceptional entrepreneurs with the tools needed to think bigger and deeper about innovation and design. It’s ambitious, but we think we can pull it together because we really believe in it, and we know that many other people do too.

How were you affected by the Japan earthquake?

My initial reaction was, no big deal, Japan has earthquakes all the time. And then I saw the disaster porn video footage on the news everywhere and I started to worry about my family. It takes a lot to make me worry like that. I spent the week feeling pretty helpless–I was in California, trying to convince my parents to leave Japan. But then my dad wrote me a long email explaining why he was staying, and my mom told me that communities were banding together to help each other, and that that was really beautiful and empowering. That made me want to be in Tokyo with them. I’m finally going home for a few days after Echelon and am really looking forward to hearing the stories of sadness, hope, and reinvention from people who have been impacted by the earthquake in different ways.

What are the hot areas that Japanese startups are working on right now?

There seem to be a lot of new apps coming out that offer different modes of communication via social networking, like a Twitter client that portrays emotions or blog software that lets you write messages by hand. As always, there’s a plethora of creative, intricately designed games. And I’m hoping to see more social enterprises pop up after the earthquake.

Lisa will be speaking at Echelon 2011 on technology and the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in March.

Link to full article