Tofugu.com – Wonky Japanese Language and Culture

Once again, I thought I’d stick with the Hawaii-Japan topic, since i just got back from there (that’s right, eat your hearts out).

In high school, all of us younguns had to do a Senior Report, of sorts. Now, whenever I do essays / reports / etc, and I have the opportunity to write about whatever I want (bad idea, teachers), I like to choose a topic that almost nobody else has studied, so the professor can’t check my facts. I’m not saying that I go around making stuff up, but I feel a little better when I’m not writing on something within the teacher’s field of expertise. It, how should I say, often results in a higher, how should I call it, grade.

Of course, as you can tell by the title, I decided to study Japanese internment. More specifically, how it affected Hawaii. Read more…

Now that I’m back from Hawaii, I finally had the chance to wade through all the emails I decided to ignore until now (sorry if that was you!). A decent number of them were people worried about racism in Japan; mainly, they were worried that people in Japan would treat them poorly because they were, well, gaijin (that means foreigner, in case you didn’t know).

A few of these emails made reference to the infamous “no gaijin” signs which are supposedly littered all around Japan. When I searched around the internet for more information on this, I was surprised with what I found… Read more…

I’ve been in Hawaii the past week or so, a few days of which was spent with my host family from when I home-stayed in Japan in high school. Having them over here in America (though, Hawaii is about as Japanese as America gets) really brings out some of the subtle cultural differences between Japanese people and Americans. Particularly, though, we spent a lot of time at restaurants, so I thought I’d talk a bit today about Japanese restaurant culture. When at various eating places, it made me realize how things in Japanese restaurants are done a little bit differently. Nothing drastic or too strange, but things that are good to know when you’re over in Japan. Read more…

Maybe it’s time he commits seppuku, though, I don’t know if I’d want to see a stomach full of hot dogs get disemboweled.

It’s been a year since the last “Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest” at Coney Island, when reigning king (at the time) of eating food “really really fast” lost his title, and his world record, to San Jose’s Joey Chestnut. This makes me sad. I thought for sure he would come back with a victory, regaining his honor. Read more…