"Three, two, one, yoi shoot!" With a swing of our arms, the children and I launched our tops from our hands, careful to hold on to the thread. "Shippai!" or "I failed," a student said her top toppled over. But not me. Not … [Read more...]
Sanrio, maker of the world famous Hello Kitty, just announced the debut of their latest character. Like any other character, Kirimi-chan has an adorable face, and you can buy all kinds of products in her shape. Unlike … [Read more...]
Usually, when we in the West begin to learn about the history of anime, we begin with Osamu Tezuka. And to a certain extent, that’s the perfect place to start. Anime, as we all know it now, began with Osamu Tezuka’s style … [Read more...]
The famous novel Memoirs of a Geisha is told from the perspective of a fictional geisha named Nitta Sayuri. Sayuri has a dramatic, eventful life (with some guy by the name of Koichi causing a lot of trouble early on) but … [Read more...]
Show of hands, who has ever traveled with their family? Pretty much everybody? It’s different from traveling with friends, isn’t it? Whether you’re driving a few hours down the road or traveling around the world, each … [Read more...]
In Tokyo, you can rarely walk along a street, turn left four times and arrive on the same street you started on. Like Edo roads, Kobun conjugations do not form expected paths. We’ve gone over most of the winding alleys … [Read more...]