Culture always seems to grow legs of its own. Regardless of how specific and niche you might think a culture is, it always finds a way to go where you least expect it. Except “Where you least expect it” always seems to be Japan. For such a supposedly homogenous culture, Japanese people seem to wholly [...]
There exist stereotypes for every kind of people and the Japanese are no exception. As with many misconceptions, some of them are based on some truth that has been exaggerated to the extreme, but some of the misconceptions about Japan are downright outlandish. Like many people, I thought that there was at least some truth [...]
Japanese sparkling water beer is the medicine that helps the salaryman endure their boss’ off pitch karaoke during the frequent work parties. It is the refreshing, crisp drink that gets the common Japanese red-faced in only half a pint. Those who have had the pleasure of drinking the more popular “dry” variety can probably describe them as [...]
It’s no secret that Japan and Hawaii have a special relationship. There are a ton of people with Japanese ancestry living in Hawaii, it’s common vacation destination for many Japanese (my Japanese relatives took their honeymoon in Hawaii), and there’s lots of Japanese elements in Hawaiian culture. Spam musubi, anybody? But Japan’s impact on Hawaii [...]
What is “beautiful?” Depends who you ask! Beauty is a very subjective thing, and its definition changes wildly depending on who you ask. What’s ugly and hideous to one person is attractive and sexy to the next. There’s no better example of this than the Japanese yaeba phenomenon. Some people in Japan think that a [...]
If you’ve been following Tofugu the last year, we’ve run a fair amount of posts about AKB48, Japan’s hottest music group. They’re a group of dozens of young, Japanese girls who have had hits on the Japanese charts for about three years running. We don’t write about them because we’re necessarily big fans of AKB48, [...]
In Japanese and Asian cultures, there are many physical traits that are considered to be attractive. A lot of the attractive traits are universally true across most cultures, but there are a few that are more specific to Japan. For instance, yaeba (snaggle tooth), anyone? Photo Source: Smosh Unfortunately, I’m not here to talk about [...]
