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Japanese Fart Scrolls

I was doing research for another post a while back, and found something a bit…unusual. It was an old Japanese scroll about farting. No, you didn’t misread that last sentence. The whole scroll, which is called He-Gassen (“The Fart Battle”) is just about people farting. Farting at other people, farting at cats, farting off of [...]

Is This Noise Or Music? (It’s Noise)

There’s a lot of music out there I just don’t really “get.” Everybody has genres of music that they don’t like or avoid, and that’s fine. To each his own. I always try to be open and receptive to different types of music, but one genre continues to confound and fascinate me. Let me introduce [...]

What Do Iranian Women Have To Do With Ninja?

When people think about Japanese history, there’s one group of people that stand out more than any other. NINJA! Even people who know nothing else about Japanese history know about ninja, their clothes, shuriken, and their sneakiness. Ninja have infiltrated popular culture like a well-guarded castle. But in the hundreds of years since ninja were [...]