Over on Mutantfrog Travelogue, a post went up earlier this week called “My Japanese sucks and always will.” The post talks about how the author, somebody who’s a long-time student of Japanese, passed the JLPT 1, and has worked and lived in Japan for several years, still doesn’t feel like his Japanese is good enough. [...]
Does riding down a hill on top of a giant log at high speeds sound a little bit dangerous to you? Good. Then you’ll probably want to be in the audience if you ever make it to the Onbashira-sai festival, held every six years in the Lake Suwa area of Nagano, Japan. The last one [...]
Do you remember the golden age of Japanese RPGs? I do. But what happened to it? Where did it go? And why is America starting to get JRPGs later than other English speaking countries if at all? It doesn’t make any sense! Fortunately though, it looks like us Wii gamers will be getting some new [...]
That’s it for this week in news. Did I miss anything? Which story was your favorite? Let me know in the comments! Every Sunday we gather the week’s weird Japanese news and present it to you in our Sunday News column. It might not be the hardest hitting news out there, but we hope that [...]
One of the coolest things about Japan might be right below your feet. All across the country, manhole covers are custom made for individual towns and cities. Even though it might seem like a mundane topic, the variety and beauty of these manhole covers is undeniable. What’s the story behind this ubiquitous art? In the [...]
Japan is world-renowned for its amazing architecture, and it’s not hard to see why. I’ve written about some of Japan’s most jaw-dropping skyscrapers along with some of the more quaint, but still novel, houses. It’s mind-blowing to me how many cool and unusual buildings are in just one city. Take Osaka, for instance; it’s the [...]
If you have been around Japanese natives for a decent amount of time, you’ll start noticing some of their unique quirks. Quirks, such as their behavioral differences, habits, and body language. There is one other idiosyncrasy that I’ve found to be interesting: superstitions. Superstitions are strongly integrated in Japanese society. If anything, I would say Japanese superstitions [...]
