Tofugu.com – Wonky Japanese Language and Culture

I get all kinds of weird questions in my e-mail inbox. Sometimes they’re creepy, sometimes they’re hilarious, sometimes they’re interesting, and sometimes they’re a part of a pattern. This is one of those patterns. A few times a month I’ll get the following question:

What is the best Japanese Language electronic dictionary?

Once I get the same question too many times, there’s a good likelihood that I’ll just write the answer via a post here, which is exactly what’ I’m doing. So, what is the best Japanese Language electronic dictionary out there? Let’s find out. Read more…

Bad news everyone. It looks like if you want to be considered as a literate member of the Japanese society, you’re going to have to learn an additional 196 kanji to make it in every day life. A proposal is in (and it seems like it’s going to pass… I guess the folks at the Agency For Cultural Affairs don’t have anything better to do) to increase “everyday kanji” to 2136 (that’s up from 1945). Read more…

Everyone knows that smoking is pretty unhealthy – even in Japan people are smoking less and less. But for me, when it comes to my debilitating addiction to cool gadgets, I’d be happy to carry highly radioactive cell phones, stare at staring women, or put one of these in my mouth. That is, as long as it’s only a Vitamin C cartridge inside. Read more…

Just after I post about getting past the Mixi blockade by using a .edu address, Mixi shakes things up and I thought they closed up the .edu loophole. [UPDATE] Turns out, it still works, and the best part is, you don’t need to ask for a Mixi invite anymore. You can register all by yourself.

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I’ve written two articles about Mixi so far (kind of a love-hate relationship going, I think). The first was about how you can use the Japanese social network Mixi to study Japanese. The second was about how Mixi essentially closed themselves off from all foreigners (or at least people outside of Japan) by making you input a Japanese cell phone e-mail address. This article is all about getting around that restriction and getting you your Mixi invite. Whew. Wait a sec, this reminds me of something… Read more…

Have you ever noticed how almost every zipper you own has “YKK” written on it? I didn’t, until I read this post about it. I did a little more research, and found out there’s quite a story behind YKK and their “circle of goodness.” Just remember, every time you zip up imagine Mr. Yoshida standing there watching, double thumbs up with approval. Read more…

A lot of you out there know how much of a (sad) Apple fanboy I am, which means you’ll probably understand why iPhone art makes my heartbeat increase. This is the post I was going to post the other day (before getting distracted by Wacom Japan’s little flash game), and yes, it’s also developed by my new favorite art / design / tech group Team-Lab. We’ve already seen how nice and shiny LCD screens can modernize hanging scrolls, but what if you want to take your hanging scrolls on the train? First, you’d have to get four iPhones, but if you’re a multi-millionaire, then why not? Read more…

Welcome to another edition of “Saturday Time Waster.” There seems to be a huge difference between American flash games and Japanese flash games. Although this isn’t 100% the case, it seems like most of the time, Japanese flash games are all about making you feel nice and calm. Most of the games seem to have no end, and they attempt to down you with pleasant music and cuteness. I suppose if I was a hard working “Sarari man” I’d want something to calm me down too while I was hiding out in my cubical playing flash games. Read more…

I’ve always been a big fan of traditional wood block prints (and similar Japanese art styles), but now I think I’m a bigger fan of Japanese traditional… er… video block prints?

A friend of mine who splits his work time between TEAMLAB (which does the art I’m about to talk about) and Pixiv (a Japanese art sharing community) told me about their most recent project (which we’ll get to in the next couple of days) and it just absolutely blew me away. That got me poking around their portfolio, and time and time again I found myself hitting the full screen button and becoming hypnotized. I’d love to have some of their art on my wall, but I can’t afford all the LCD screens required. Read more…

I played around on this website for way too long. Thanks to Cscout, I came across the website kyokasho.net, which allows you to choose from several school subjects, and then doodle all over the pictures of historical figures. I remember those days. They weren’t all that long ago. I would ignore the teacher (maybe that’s why I became a Japanese Studies major?) and do all sorts of horrible things to my textbooks. One thing I remember doing was erasing numbers in my math books (those pen erasers were good for this) and rewrite the numbers in the same font so the poor sap who got my book the next year could be as confused as I was. When I wasn’t feeling like such a horrible person, I’d doodle on the faces of historical figures. This is exactly what this website allows you to do. Some folks get pretty ridiculously creative. It’s great. Read more…