Archive | July, 2011

Why Japan’s Newest Bullet Train is Kind of a Big Deal

A new bullet train line opened up in Japan recently that connects the whole island of Kyushu. When the line opened, there were huge celebrations all over the island, and there was even an award-winning commercial for the bullet train line. So if this was such a big deal, why have we not heard of [...]

Want To Learn Japanese? Maybe You Should JFDI.

Sometimes we forget that the hard part about learning Japanese is actually just doing it. We whinge and we complain and we spend so much time preparing or learning how you should learn Japanese that we forget to just learn Japanese (i.e. we forget to JFDI). That is, strangely enough, the most important part about learning [...]

Studio Ghibli and Melodic Death Metal? Together? Oh Yes.

Facemelting claims yet another victim. Like many others, I have my fair share of fond memories and nostalgia when it comes to the many works of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. So needless to say when I heard talk of an album consisting of reworks of the most popular Studio Ghibli tunes, I was a [...]

Meet Our New Intern!

It’s been a little over a month since we announced our first-ever summer internship and since then, it’s been pretty wild ride. We had about 250 people apply in the first round, a bigger response than we ever could have hoped for. After a second round, we narrowed down the number of people and last [...]