On our last full day in Japan, the Tofugu team and the venerable Gakuranman visited Sega Joypolis, an arcade / amusement park in Odaiba, Tokyo. At Joypolis, we tried our hand at purikura, or a Japanese photo booth. As you can see, the results are as colorful as they are disturbing: Purikura (short for “print [...]
At one point in our recent trip collecting film for TofuguTV, we went up to Yoichi, Hokkaido to visit the Nikka Whiskey Brewery. In our naivety, we bought whiskey thinking we could send it back. We quickly found out that this would be very hard. Various shipping companies as well as the first post office we [...]
There’s a little-known phenomenon in history called “dancing mania,” and it’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like: huge groups of people start dancing for no real reason until they’re completely exhausted. It’s a rare, incredibly interesting part of human behavior. In Japan, something similar happened a few hundred years ago. It was called ええじゃないか [...]
When I first came to Japan when I was 11 years old, Japanese TV was a source of mystery and wonder to me. I kinda knew about all of the parodies about Japanese game shows, and I can remember sitting transfixed in a hotel room, watching Japanese Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, seeing a [...]
While I definitely miss plenty of weird things about Japan, there are things I do not miss as well. While everyone has differing tastes, these are the things that I personally don’t really miss (and wish I could have while in Japan). America, you got these things right. Japan, you should takes some notes. 1. The [...]
As we film this month in Japan, I’m starting to remember the things that I’ve missed most while being here. While there’s things I definitely don’t miss, I think it’s the little things that count. Most of them have to do with bathrooms in some way, but hopefully you’ll understand my love for getting my [...]
Clubbing in Japan was most definitely a new experience for me. As an American, I’m used to a certain sort of “routine” when it comes to going out, so clubbing in Japan was pretty wacky. I only went out twice during my ten week stay there, but I had my reasons for not trying to [...]
