Tofugu.com – Wonky Japanese Language and Culture

Tonight (or today, if you were in Japan), fifteen J-bloggers gathered together in the same room, and nothing imploded. Well, that’s probably because it was all virtual. We set up a conference via eduFire, and talked about Blogging, J-blogging, collaboration, and gave each other a lot of good advice. Here’s a list of our attendees, some text on what we talked about, as well as some more pictures. I highly recommend you give these folks a look! Read more…

No doubt, if you’ve taken Japanese lessons from me before, you probably have heard this “rant” before. The one about Star Wars and how it was “inspired” by a Japanese film, and Yoda (which is a Japanese name, by the way) is actually an old Samurai master who speaks with Japanese grammar. I use this as a jumping off point when teaching people about Japanese grammar, so I thought it would be fun to share it with all of you as well! Read more…

This is pretty old news, but something I only came across today while browsing JapanSoc. Apparently a village in Japan called Inakadate (田舎館) has a ridiculously awesome festival where hundreds of people help out and plant different varieties of rice that grow up to be different colors (and thus create images like the ones you see above). They started doing this to reinvigorate the town, and it’s done quite well! In 2006 there were 200,000 visitors alone. That has to do something good for their economy. Let’s take a look at some of the rice paddies they’ve made up till now! Read more…

It’s New Year’s Eve (in my time zone, at least) and since I haven’t been super active here lately, I decided to make some e-nengajou (年賀状 or New Year’s postcards) for you guys. Most everybody in Japan sends out nengajou to their family, friends, and coworkers, and as long as they’re taken to the post office before December 25th, they all arrive on January 1st. Ours are a little early, but it’s the thought that counts, right? Make sure to click on the previews for the full size cards ↓

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