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Nara’s Super-Creepy New Mascot wants you to Win a Japanese Textbook!
This Contest has been extended to April 9, 2008! Nara-City, the capitol city of Nara prefecture, is known for it’s beautiful temples and overly aggressive biting deer monsters. This year, Nara Heijo-Kyo Capitol is celebrating its 1300th year anniversary, and will be holding a big a event. Usually when this kind of thing happens, whoever [...]
Continue reading...Customizable Cup Noodles
4. November 2007
Come lunchtime sophomore year of high school, all the cool kids were eating Cup Noodles. I wasn’t cool, unfortunately, but I loved them as well—with an instant ramen in my hands, I looked very much like that kid in the picture up there: excited, elated, and full of MSG-goodness. Towards the end of the school year, [...]
Continue reading...Putting the “hu” in Tofugu
14. September 2007
I recently had a discussion with my friend Max about the nuances of Japanese pronunciation (maybe not so recently; it was when I was back home in Hawaii). One of the more interesting things we talked about was the fact that, in Japanese, there’s no “f” sound. This is a result of the fact [...]
Continue reading...Storytime: Mori Building, Tipping, and Coldstone Japan
12. August 2007
A little while back, the Tofugu team went on an excursion to Japan. One of the things we really wanted to see was the Mori building. More specifically, we wanted to ascend the Mori building and then look at everything not inside it. Being one of the best city-views Japan had to offer, we thought [...]
Continue reading...Japan’s Top Producer of Ugly Women: Gunma*
6. August 2007
*Paraphrased translation of 「ブスの産地」日本一は「群馬県」 from the Shukan Shincho website. According to a recent online poll conducted by Livedoor, a Japan-based internet service provider, the women of Gunma Prefecture (群馬県) are the most unattractive in Japan. Ouch. That’s right, out of Japan’s 47 prefectures, Gunma, located in the middle of the Japanese archipelago, placed dead [...]
Continue reading...Restaurant: Ninja Akasaka
29. July 2007
I came upon this Ninja Akasaka’s website while planning a trip to Japan with the Tofugu team; when I presented the idea of going there to the boys, they were excited, to say the least. Even when I started to have second thoughts and tried to talk them out of going, they wouldn’t hear of [...]
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10. March 2008