Akiko Fujita

Akiko Fujita is a multimedia journalist based in Los Angeles, and a regular contributor to PRI's The World.

Akiko Fujita is a multimedia journalist based in Los Angeles, and a regular contributor to The World.Prior to her move back to the West Coast, Fujita spent more than 4 years in Tokyo, working as a correspondent for ABC News. Her work has also been featured in The Wall Street Journal, ESPN, Al Jazeera America, and CNN.


The World

Creating a zero-waste city

In a rural Japanese town, the mayor has big ambitions.

Puteri Hasannah Karunia is a popular fashion blogger, one of Indonesia's generation of young Muslim fashionistas known as "hijabers."

Hijab fashion is so popular in Indonesia non-Muslim designers are getting in on it

Belief
Grandfather

My grandfather’s hidden past is wrapped up in his complex relationship to World War II

Conflict
mariachi

LA’s master mariachi tailor says sewing started out like a game for him

Culture
Volunteers with Asian Americans Advancing Justice, an Los Angeles-based non-profit, work the phones to get Asian-American voters to the polls in California. The phone bank is part of the "Your Vote Matters" campaign, an effort to get 30,000 infrequent vot

Getting Asian immigrants in the US to vote means breaking the language barrier

Global Politics
kids

Central American kids who make it to the US must cope with the violence they left behind

Education

Many of the kids who crossed the Mexico-US border this year are now in Los Angeles and starting school. But it’s not so easy to leave behind the violence they witnessed, and which drove them to flee, and simply start over in America.

Joe Corona, 23 years old and Mexican-American, is one of the star players for the Xolos, a professional soccer team based in Tijuana, Mexico. The team is actively recruiting top soccer players from the US, and now other Mexican soccer clubs are following

To get on the US national men’s soccer team, you may need to cross the border into Mexico

Sports

Joe Corona, 23, plays for the US national men’s soccer team. But the Californian native’s road to representing his country has taken him across the border to Tijuana.Joe Corona, 23, plays for the US national men’s soccer team. But the Californian native’s road to representing his country has taken him across the border to Tijuana.

Gil Devine in front of his home in Mexico, near the border.  Devine commutes to work six days a week in San Diego.

Some Americans are trading their US homes for an international commute from Mexico

Lifestyle & Belief

For some, the California lifestyle is just too expensive. So why not trade your life in an American suburb for a bit of beach in Mexico … and a commute?For some, the California lifestyle is just too expensive. So why not trade your life in an American suburb for a bit of beach in Mexico … and a commute?

Bruce Kaji, shaking the hand of Japan's Crown Prince who had just landed in Los Angeles on a US Air Force airplane, in 1961. "In our family, we call this photo, The Prince and the Pauper.," says Bruce's son, Jon.

Toyota built Torrance into the second-largest home of Japanese Americans. Now, it’s leaving

It may seem hard to believe, but Toyota almost didn’t make it in the US. Its first car, the Toyopet Crown, was a flop. Toyota helped establish a huge Japanese-American community in Torrance, California that finds it hard to imagine the company is moving on.

Bruce Kaji, shaking the hand of Japan's Crown Prince who had just landed in Los Angeles on a US Air Force airplane, in 1961. "In our family, we call this photo, The Prince and the Pauper.," says Bruce's son, Jon.

Toyota built Torrance into the second-largest home of Japanese Americans. Now, it’s leaving

It may seem hard to believe, but Toyota almost didn’t make it in the US. Its first car, the Toyopet Crown, was a flop. Toyota helped establish a huge Japanese-American community in Torrance, California that finds it hard to imagine the company is moving on.