How to Annoy a Simpleton in a Comfy Echo Chamber

POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa · Sep 10, 2026 · 10m

What do you get when you tell someone in Japan you once lived in Britain for a few years? Hint: it is always, without fail, a question about the food.

This week on Post-Whatever, I go looking for the exact moment a perfectly nice conversation turns into a stereotype convention — and find it, reliably, in the first thirty seconds of talking about the UK. I mount, in my own defence, a fairly bold claim: that London's food scene beats Tokyo's, and that watching a (Japanese) stranger's face try to process this information is one of life's great, cheap pleasures.

From there it's a proper rant —…