Kawaii (かわいい), most commonly translated as “cute,” is practically everywhere in Japan – and I do mean everywhere. To paraphrase author Mary Roach, the Japanese save money with cute, pray with cute, and even have sex with cute (yes, there is indeed a Hello Kitty vibrator). Image sources: 1, 2, 3 Pre-teen and teen idols [...]
It was August 6 when the first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. Only three days later, August 9th, the second one fell in Nagasaki. This week marks the 67th anniversary of the blasts that ended WWII and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, some during and some after via the radiation. I’m not going to [...]
Ah, dogs. (Wo)man’s best friend! My profile picture is of Fionna hugging Cake the Cat, and I volunteer at a cat shelter on the weekend, but here’s the thing: I’m actually a dog person. So, why not write a post about dogs and Japan? Without further ado, I present to you Japan’s most noteworthy dogs! [...]
We take it for granted nowadays that so much in our lives is standardized. Most places in the world recognize the Gregorian calendar, the metric system, etc., which makes it a lot easier to live our lives. But it wasn’t always that way; back in the days before the internet, TV, or even radio, things [...]
Rajio taiso (ラジオ体操), or “radio exercises” is an integral (if slightly dorky) part of Japanese culture. You’ve probably come across it even if you don’t live in Japan – it pops up all the time in anime and movies (I myself first stumbled upon it in Studio Ghibli’s Omoide poro poro (おもいでぽろぽろ) or “Only Yesterday”). [...]
Hate to break it to you normal-walker, but the way you’re walking right now is inefficient, ridiculous, and just plain wrong. You know how you’re overly moving your hips and twisting your body like a pretzel, causing yourself to exert more energy than necessary? What about the perpetual falling forward that you’re doing while you [...]
One of the weirdest things about Japanese is that nobody really knows where it comes from. The languages spoken in Japan aren’t related to any other language on earth. Obviously the written language (i.e. kanji) pulls a lot from Chinese, but where the spoken language comes from is more or less a complete mystery for [...]
