Tofugu.com – Wonky Japanese Language and Culture

I’ve come out of my blogging hibernation to share the news about Japanese cellphone company Willcom’s newest creation, the Kuma (Bear) Phone. I’ve always loved Willcom’s cutesy designs, but they’ve taken it a step farther this time, embedding phone parts into an actual stuffed animal ↓

Yep, that inocuous-looking teddy bear actually functions as a stand-alone mobile phone. Read more…

First off, I love eduFire. It’s a great website with great people, a great interface, and a great mission: They want to make it easy for tutors to teach students a foreign language. Right now, there are forty-three languages being taught on eduFire (and that number is growing as tutors increase), including Arabic, English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, and of course, Japanese. And yes, I am one of the forty-one Japanese tutors currently teaching on eduFire (but more on that later).

But, how does everything work? Everything’s pretty simple right now, and the eduFire staff are constantly making improvements to the site, mostly based on user suggestion. The site’s creators are very good about listening and responding to feedback, and their employees are very friendly (If you are a tutor, you will be contacted by Marco, who will join your lesson as a “student” and walk you through eduFire and answer your questions. Super cool Frood. Read more…

This article is all thanks to rjhoolan, who tipped me on this via Twitter. First off, thank you rjhoolan for this tip. It’s freakin amazing! Anyways, if you’re reading this, you probably want to watch some Japanese television. Not only that, but you probably want some LIVE Japanese television. I’ve got some good news and some bad news. Let’s start with the bad: This doesn’t work on a Mac. Supposedly they’re working on a Mac version, but who knows when that will turn out. But, if you have Windows (or are running bootcamp, VMware, or Parallels on your Mac), this should work fine. If you ask me, this is a good enough reason to install windows on VMware, allow it a mere 256mb, and let it do its magic. It’s that amazing.

The service that lets you do this is called TVU networks.  They explain themselves much better than I can, so let’s let them do it.

TVU uses a new broadcast technology called Real-Time Packet Replication.  With this technology, all the viewers who are watching a channel at the same time are cooperating to give everyone the best possible signal.  TVU’s application does not create any new files on your hard disk because you’re watching live TV. [source]

So, that’s how it’s done, but I bet you want to know how to get it up and running, like now. Who wouldn’t? Ridiculous Japanese commercials await! Read more…

Recently, I became a huge fan of podcasts. I thought they were a lot lamer than they really are, so I was surprised when I actually took a look at the Podcast section in iTunes. Now, I’m listening to NPR constantly, especially Car Talk, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, and This American Life. This went on for a little while, then I realized that maybe it was possible to listen to Japanese podcasts as well. It would be great for passive Japanese listening practice, and even more importantly, it would be free. Still, in the past I had tried to download Japanese music from Japanese iTunes, and it denied me because I didn’t have a Japanese credit card (though later on we’ll talk about a way around this, according to one of our readers, at the end of the article). Read more…

So I was looking through my old yearbook…well, maybe not.

So I was looking through this buddy of mine’s yearbook…er…no, I guess I wasn’t.

So, I was using this website that lets you upload pictures and it will superimpose them onto super retro yearbook photos for your laughter and enjoyment. I know I enjoyed it. I did it to myself and posted it up on my personal blog, BoxedTofu. I then did an article over on my “about America blog,” コウイチ弁. That’s two out of three, right there. So I thought, “hey, maybe I can work this whole yearbook thing into Tofugu as a roundabout way of telling people about a few fun Japanese celebrities. So, that’s what I’m doing, afro and all. Read more…

A year or two ago, Japanese square shaped watermelon were big in the news. Not only were they easier to ship, but they were more expensive too, and that catches anyone’s attention. Today, I read an article over at Megaijin, that talked about triangular shaped watermelon (even more expensive, but more difficult to ship, I imagine). This sparked my interest, so I decided to dive a little deeper. You’ll be amazed at the weird watermelon-related things I’ve come across! Read more…

Just a quick FYI to everyone – comments are going a little bit nuts right now, due to an upgrade to our comment system. All comments have been switched over to Disqus now, which means olllld comments are gone (for now). We’re working on a way to get them back, but if we can’t, it doesn’t really matter too much because they’re ollld.

If you notice anything else that’s particularly weird, please let us know, in the, uh, comments! Only thing I’ve noticed so far is the comment box appearing in the wrong spot (at the top instead of the bottom). Anything else? Let us know. Thanks much! Things will be back to normal any moment.

I’m sure you’ve all been anxiously waiting, hoping to get your グミ sugar fix on sooner rather than later. It’s finally that time, and the five randomly picked Twitter users have been chosen, thanks to the random number generator over at RANDOM.ORG. Two people won from a Twitter follow over at Koichiben, and the other three won by hitting the follow button over at Tofugu’s Twitter page. If you didn’t win, not all hope is lost, though! More information will be after the jump.

If you’re a winner (one of those lucky people pictured above), contact me ASAP so we can choose you a flavor. More info about flavors further down.

So, what if you didn’t win? Well, here’s an option for you, if you want it: Read more…

If you’ve been around a while, you’ll notice that the word “week” is missing from “Japan News week in review.” If you’ve been around a while, you’ll also know that these never come out once a week. So, in order to put a little less pressure on writing these too often (and thus becoming a Japanese news blog, which is something I don’t want to do), I’ll just write them as I gather enough news that I want to write about. That way, they’ll come when they come, and hopefully slightly more often. “Japan News in Review” doesn’t cover all the important news, just the stuff I like. So, here we go! And, down at the bottom is some Tofugu news, even, so if you’re interested in that kind of thing it’ll be down there somewhere.

Japan News August 1 – August 12:

“WhatJapanThinks” of Dinosaurs: WhatJapanThinks translated a survey for us done by the MyVoice internet community. They asked 13,867 of their members via a private questionnaire everything you’d ever want to know about dinosaurs. Questions ranged from simple things, like, “Are you interested in dinosaurs” to more useless information (though, not much less useful, honestly), such as “If you were reborn as a dinosaur, what kind of dinosaur would you like to be” (I would be Earl from the TV show Dinosaurs). Of course, if you head over to WhatJapanThinks, you can find out the answers to all your burning dinosaur questions. [source] Read more…

Somehow, thanks to the power of the Internets, I received an email from a pro fighter currently working in Japan. The email went something like this: “Hey, I love Tofugu! Don’t mess with me or I’ll break your head off and spit down your neck” (well, maybe not the second part). I thought it would be interesting to interview a pro fighter in Japan. I mean, how often do you bump into one (and survive)? I mean, come on, think Segata Sanshiro. Here’s a picture of her (on the left), and right after, the interview!

Q. What is your name and where are you originally from?
My name is Roxanne Modafferi. I was born in Delaware, and grew up in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Read more…