Japanese pop culture is something that fascinates people all over the world. In recent years, the relevance of so many elements of Japan's cultural output has been exploding globally yet the ability to navigate what's happening on-the-ground remains just slightly out of reach for many. It's hard enough to keep up with trends when you're not in the thick of them, but add language barriers, and profit-driven focuses on what companies choose to promote internationally and it can be pretty tough for anyone to stay on top of all the different happenings in Japanese pop culture.
That's where we hope to make an impact.
Our mission here at scrmbl (pronounced 'scramble') is to provide that on-the-ground look at what's happening in a wide range of different pop culture topics in Japan. Our identity is directly inspired by the world famous Shibuya scramble crossing, known as the busiest intersection in the world. It's a place where people of all different backgrounds, interests, and subcultures are constantly crossing paths.
Our team is largely based in Tokyo, and is made up of veterans of several relevant industries as well as experienced journalists who specialize in media coming from the Japanese entertainment complex. You may even recognize several of us from a previous project that was focused on promoting Japanese pop culture called OTAQUEST that was in operation from 2018-2021. We share the same kind of wide range of personal interests and backgrounds as the people who walk along Shibuya crossing every day.
On the content side of things, our bread and butter comes in the form of original editorial and features written from a perspective of genuine interest (be it positive or negative), and a desire to be as informative as possible. Our tone tries to convey that as well, we're covering topics that are fun and exciting, and we express that enthusiasm in the way we write. We'll be covering topics from the past, present, and future of Japan's massive cultural output, and we really hope you'll find something to new to love in the process.
What you're seeing from us today is what we're effectively referring to as our open beta. We'll be regularly publishing new content almost every day going forward, with the frequency and range of topics ramping up as we go. You're also going to see some changes happening visually as we build out our website into something much more substantial. There's a lot of stuff in the pipeline both in terms of content and features, and we're hitting the ground running so please pardon our dust as construction is readily underway.
This website is also only the tip of the iceberg. We have future plans already in the works to do some really exciting stuff in the live events space, and that's only just one of the directions we'll be going in as time goes on. As things are still quite fresh for us we still have a lot of work to do before we get to that point, but expect some details and announcements sooner rather than later.
We hope you'll stick around with us, we have an endless amount of things we want to share and we're only just getting started.
