“Don’t look now, but there’s some weirdo behind us taking a picture.” Sometimes it’s the little things that matter. A few weeks ago, I was reading The Most Human Human, a book about artificial intelligence, linguistics and chatbots. One of the most interesting things I learned from this book was how difficult it is to [...]
The Onion is, perhaps, one of the best written news sites out there. Period. Oh, sure, it consists of a whole bunch of “parody” and “fake news” – but that doesn’t mean the writing is bad. Quite the opposite. They ought to win a Pulitzer or two (or three or four). Parody news, however, can [...]
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Man Force Trio: Ya, Ku, and Za Everyone’s most loved group, the Yakuza, is once again being brought down by “The Man.” The Japanese organized crime syndicates, known for their strict code of conduct and crimes such as extortion, prostitution, blackmail, protection money and fraud, are now in danger of losing a significant part of [...]
Today’s guest post comes from everybody’s favorite Kiwi, the awesome Hikosaemon. He’s an incredibly prolific video blogger living in Tokyo, and his post today is about coming to understand Japanese values. Enjoy! About five years ago now, I sat in a meeting room being interviewed by a very senior woman executive of the American company [...]
If you live in South America and love Japan, then a visit to the Land of the Rising Sun might be closer than you think. Well, kind of. Brazil is not only the home to awesome things like bossa nova and Pelé, but the biggest Japanese population outside of Japan is – believe it or [...]
Do you know what is probably the number one thing keeping people (and possibly you) from learning Japanese? Fear. Cold, dank, heart stopping, FEAR. Well, okay, maybe it’s not that bad. But it’s at least an underlying whispering thing that erodes your courage with time. In this post, I’m going to talk about this fear, [...]
Poor tanuki: they must be freezing their balls off. Now that Halloween is all over and done with, it’s time to look ahead at the upcoming cold months. To quote Game of Thrones, winter is coming. And winter in Japan, especially in the northern parts of Japan, can be unforgiving. Not only are winters cold [...]
Hey everyone. I’m pretty certain we screwed up, though to be honest, I’m not sure how much yet until I talk to the right folks. We posted something up this morning about Americans and their food portion sizes in comparison to Japan and their portion sizes / ways they eat. There were problems with this [...]
“You know I be drinkin’ dat Crown Royal, son.” Japanese Princess Mako (who seems to have permanent :3 face) recently turned 20, getting media coverage all over Japan. And while some of you might think that this some bullshit news story about a monarchy that has no real power or purpose in this day and [...]
