Welcome to another episode of season three of the Ikigai with Jennifer Shinkai podcast. On the podcast this week I got to sit down with Tengyo Kura, a self professed vagabond. Tengyo has a beautiful outlook on life that has propelled him around the world to connect with many people from different cultures, countries and experiences. Vagabondism is how Tengyo lives his life and is directly connected to his ikigai, and is a way for him to experience true connection to other people. Tengyo has some amazing insights to share with you all that will leave you truly inspired to seek out more true connection in your own life!

If you enjoyed this episode and it inspired you in some way, we’d love to hear about it and know your biggest takeaway.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• How teaching languages to students made Tengyo realise he was a storyteller at heart
• Why we can never truly understand each other completely, but how love and respect lead to true connection
• What vagabondism means to Tengyo & what we can learn from people living a vagabond life
• Tengyo’s advice for those interested in experiencing vagabondism for themselves

About Tengyo Kura:

Tengyo was born in 1972, and studied anthropology at a university in Tokyo.

Since 2001, Tengyo has been living as a vagabond (stranger) in various parts of the world.

Tengyo taught English at a university in Mongolia, was a language teacher at a law school in Sri Lanka and encountered the Tsunami in 2004. He was a lecturer of Contemporary Japanese Culture at a university college in Norway (2005-2009), and organized the Hiroshima A-bomb exhibition in cooperation with the City of Hiroshima and the Nobel Peace Committee in 2008. He was a Japanese language and cultural teacher at a secondary school in Latvia (2011-2012), and was nominated for the Best Teacher Award in the capital city of Riga in 2011.

Tengyo lived in India and other Asian countries and wrote stories for his storytelling work “Chronicle of Vagabondism” in 2013. He collaborated with Latvian artists for the EU Capital of Culture Commemorative Event in Riga, Latvia in 2014. He lived in several countries in South America and wrote stories for his storytelling work “Chronicle of Vagabondism” from 2014 to 2016. Tengyo also created a storytelling artwork "The Tokyo Vagabond x Ueno" in 2017. Tengyo was a storyteller of an exchange program for TURN, a big cultural project initiated by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (2017-2020). He also worked with Cocoroom, an art NPO in the biggest Japanese homelessness community in Osaka City (2020-2022), and was appointed as a chief member of the NPO in 2022.

Tengyo resumed activities in Africa in November 2022, and introduced a Japanese concept of social inclusive programs to countries in the southern part of Africa. Tengyo is now carrying out various activities called African Jamboree 2025 that emphasize cultural exchange between Japan and some African nations until 2025.

Connect with Tengyo:

Website: https://vagabond.link/

Connect with Jennifer:

Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifershinkai/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennifershinkaicoach

Website: https://jennifershinkai.com/

Instagram Coaching and Podcast:

Welcome to Season 3 of Ikigai with Jennifer Shinkai!

Adrian Francis is the filmmaker behind the powerful documentary Paper City, exploring the impact of the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945 and the ongoing struggle for it to be acknowledged and remembered. Adrian was brave enough to come on the show at a point where he has not figured out his next steps yet. I thought this was an opportunity not to be missed: to hear from someone in the midst of a transition after completing a major project. If you are also going through a period of transition and haven’t got it all figured out, I think you will find much solace and inspiration in this episode. All those questions? Those hard to grasp ideas and concepts that feel so murky right now? Totally normal…in fact, an essential part of the process!

If you enjoyed this episode and it inspired you in some way, we’d love to hear about it and know your biggest takeaway.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• How Adrian came to make a film about the firebombing of Tokyo
• What happens when you finish a project that has been the main focus of your life
• How you can find meaning for your next challenge
• Flashing forward and backward in our lives to see what our values are independent of current circumstances

About Adrian

Originally from Australia, Adrian Francis has lived in Tokyo for 17 years, working as a teacher, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He majored in documentary film at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne University. Francis directed the award-winning documentary short, Lessons from the Night, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival. He was invited to participate in the Berlinale Talents program at the Berlin Film Festival, where he began developing the project that would become Paper City—his first feature-length film. Paper City premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2021 and has screened theatrically in Japan, and internationally at festivals and through Al Jazeera's Witness series. It has won numerous awards, including the Audience Award at the Tokyo Documentary Film Festival, an ATOM (Australian Teachers of Media) Award for Best History Documentary, and Best Emerging Director at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. He recently gave a TEDxWasedaU talk on the bombing of civilians, Paper City: Memory, Forgetting, and the Firebombing of Tokyo. Most recently, Adrian has become interested in what we can do to take climate change action.

Things mentioned in the episode:

Paper City Screening:

March 1-7 at Eigakan Stranger

Screening daily at 11:20 (with English subtitles)

3 Chome-7-1 Kikukawa, Sumida City, Tokyo 130-0024

https://stranger.jp/movie/2541/

TEDxWasedaU Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFr3U3bbuMg

Connect with Adrian and find out more about Paper City:

Paper City Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/papercitytokyo/

Paper City Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/papercitytokyo

Paper City X: https://twitter.com/papercitytokyo

Paper City Website: papercityfilm.com

Adrian’s Instagram:

Happy Holidays everyone! This can be a time that tests our health and wellness goals, so this episode’s guest is here to help. Menya Hinga is an online health and fitness coach and co-founder of SOGO Fitness—Japan’s largest non-profit fitness community. Menya has helped hundreds of individuals and numerous organizations make better decisions related to fitness, habits and health. Listen to the episode to feel more empowered and confident in your ability to make changes in your life!

If you enjoyed this episode and it inspired you in some way, we’d love to hear about it and know your biggest takeaway. 

In this episode you’ll hear:

• How an online health and fitness coach is different to a personal trainer
• What fitness autonomy is and why Menya strives to help his clients achieve it
• What made Menya reassess his relationship to alcohol and drinking
• The importance of your environment when making big changes in your life
• How Menya empowers people to believe in their own ability to change

About Menya:

Menya helps high-performers who are struggling to manage stress and weight gain, learn to stress less, move more, and eat better in order to transform their health and performance.

As an expat, father of 3 (soon to be 4!), and personal trainer turned online health and fitness coach, Menya knows how difficult it can be to create work-life balance while wearing many different hats.

So for more than a decade he’s helped hundreds of individuals and numerous organizations make better decisions related to fitness, habits and health as a health and fitness coach, personal trainer, and co-founder of SOGO Fitness—Japan’s largest non-profit fitness community.

Connect with Menya:

Website: www.menyahinga.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/menyahinga/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/menyahinga

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/menyahinga/

Connect with Jennifer

Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifershinkai/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennifershinkaicoach 

Website: https://jennifershinkai.com/ 

Instagram Coaching and Podcast: https://www.instagram.com/ikigaiwithjennifershinkai/

Instagram Artist: https://www.instagram.com/jennifershinkai/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ikigaiwithjennifershinkai/