A lot of art out there goes over my head. It’s my fault, really — I’m not very educated in art and don’t usually understand the context. But some art I look at and just get. Not because I understand its place in art history or anything, but because it’s just so completely outrageous that [...]
Earlier this week, some bonsai trees were stolen from their owner in New South Wales, Australia. You’d think that the theft of some plants would be pretty unremarkable (Not my ferns, take anything but my ferns!), but these bonsai were estimated to be worth between $5,000 and $8,000 dollars. Several thousand dollars seems like kind [...]
Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are. -Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin To some people, Iron Chef was just a TV show. It ran for about a decade in Japan and had a few, less successful spinoffs around the world. Among a sea of reality TV cooking shows, it might not [...]
Every Sunday we gather the week’s weird and interesting Japanese news and present it to you in our Sunday News column. It might not always be hard-hitting news, but we hope that it still informs and entertains you. Enjoy!
It can be difficult to get people excited about religion in Japan. No doubt, Japan’s culture and its religions are deeply intertwined, but the vast majority of Japanese people say that aren’t very religious. With membership in religions across Japan in free fall, many are trying to make themselves more appealing to attract more followers. [...]
Otaku have long been an economic force to be reckoned with. Their immense spending power has long made them the target of merchants of all types (action figures, DVDs, body pillows), and they even have their own destinations. Akihabara, a district in Tokyo, has long been a sort of otaku Mecca. You’ll find rare and [...]
Japanese technology can be weird sometimes. And I don’t mean “weird” like a sex robot or something, I just mean different in unexpected ways. Japanese cell phones, for example, have long suffered from “Galápagos syndrome” — meaning that they have evolved in very specialized and unique ways that make them suited for Japan and Japan [...]
