Military forces all over the world are constantly trying to think of the next great weapon, the one device that will help them turn the tides of battle in their favor and crush the enemy. In World War 2, the Japanese thought that weapon would be a new battleship, bigger and greater than anything that [...]
Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I have a thing for watches. I have frittered away many hours on watch forums, Amazon, YouTube, and eBay looking at watches, deciding what watch brands are worth the money and which ones are pure crap. As I am not yet a rich man I cannot at [...]
Ever wonder what makes Japanese food taste the way it does? It absolutely has a very distinct flavor, but how would you describe it? A hundred years ago, the distinct flavor of Japanese food lead to the discovery of a brand new flavor: umami. The Four Basic Tastes Image sources: 1, 2, 3, & 4 [...]
If you ask most people, they’ll tell you that North Korea and Japan pretty much hate each other. This is probably true, for the most part. Japan is a festering pit of democracy that the Great / Brilliant Leaders of North Korea can’t tolerate. North Korea, on the other hand, builds nuclear weapons and attempts [...]
Japan has had many different names in its time. We in America are lucky. We just have “America,” “The United States,” and “The United States Of America.” I don’t think we’ve really been called much else, at least not as an entire nation. Japan, on the other hand, has been called so many different things, [...]
Continuing with our series of articles on minority groups in Japan (previous posts include the Burakumin and the Brazilian-Japanese), we’ll take brief look into the (now officially recognized with hanko-stamp of approval by the Japanese Government as of 2008) indigenous group, the Ainu. The Ainu population is concentrated in the northern islands of modern Japan, specifically Hokkaido and Honshu. They [...]
Sushi. That delicious Japanese food that everyone seems to love. Call this post a rant if you want, but everyone is doing it wrong. I believe in sushi purity, where no other sushi is allowed to exist in my extremely racist one-sushi world. But seriously though, Americans ruin all ethnic foods. Taco Bell? Happy Teriyaki? [...]
Image Source: Flickr Swords have always been a big deal in Japan. Japanese swords, or nihontō (日本刀) are one of the most highly sought after types of swords in the world today. A sword was even involved with the mythological creation of Japan. The Japanese sun goddess of the universe Amaterasu gave her grandson Ninigi [...]
Probably more than anywhere else, robots are a big part of Japanese culture, and it’s no secret that we here at Tofugu think that these machines are evil, human-hating beings. But even with my open revulsion to these sinister automatons, I learned something interesting about them recently – they’re much older than I thought. Lots [...]
One of the things Western visitors notice on their visit to Japan is the homogenous population. As an urban-living American, walking through the streets of the U.S. and seeing a wide, diverse range of ethnicities is an everyday occurrence that doesn’t cause more than a blink of an eye. Not so much in Japan. To the [...]
