A while back I wrote about some of the more popular tropes used in manga (and anime too!). A single post really doesn’t do the topic justice, though, given the huge number of manga tropes out there. The tropes I covered previously were also limited to the straightforward, clear-cut variety: nosebleeds indicate sexual arousal, snot [...]
There’s no arguing that a lot of what we consider stereotypically Japanese actually came from elsewhere. Japan has China to thank for the Japanese language, which is also where ramen is from. Tempura, konpeito, and castella cake came by way of the Portuguese; likewise, curry was introduced by the British. The gakuran and the sailor [...]
It’s not easy to write about art. Art is highly subjective after all, and I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a complete plebeian when it comes to art. But someone much wiser than I once said that art is supposed to make the viewer feel something – and I certainly had a lot [...]
I almost gave up on Japanese once. When I first started self-studying Japanese, I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff there was to learn. I can even remember that panicky feeling like it was yesterday: in one hand I had the CD sleeve for MARS, Gackt’s sophomore album, in the other I had [...]
Hello, my name’s Fiona, and I’m an otaku – or at least, I used to be. My obsession of choice? Comics. I loved them. I was an equal opportunities lover too. At one time my huge collection included Spiderman and Garfield and The Far Side, as well as Doraemon and Dragonball (translated, of course). These [...]
This is a post about food, glorious food. To be more precise, this is a post about the food depicted in Studio Ghibli films – always mouthwateringly detailed and remarkably true to life. Grave of the Fireflies, for example, featured candies in a rectangular can: they’re Sakuma Drops, still manufactured to this day. Then there [...]
Just about every Japanese festival involves genitalia or nudity. Well, actually that’s not true, although it certainly is true that these sorts of festivals seem to be the most well-known outside of Japan. Photo by ash-man It’s only natural that these festivals are as popular as they are: there’s the shock value, of course, along [...]
