A blood type towel: not as gross as it sounds. Sometimes, it's the small cultural differences you notice more than the big ones. For me, one of the most interesting things about Japanese culture is the fascination with … [Read more...]
Jazz hands! Traditional theater has always been a huge part of Japanese culture. Noh, kabuki, and bunraku theater have been around in Japan for literally hundreds of years, but Japan has also been quick to adapt … [Read more...]
"Mister Spock I can't understand a word you're saying." Lots of people think of Japan as a very spiritual, traditional culture. To them, Japan is all toriis and haiku and wandering monks. But according to an international … [Read more...]
We all know them when we see them: those PBR-drinking, ironic-glasses-wearing, retro-fashion-sporting young cool kids. Hipsters. We like to think of hipsters as an American phenomenon, coming out of San Francisco or … [Read more...]
Goroawase means "wordplay" but I think it's quite a bit more interesting than that. In English, when I think of "wordplay" I think of comedy's highest and most elegant form of humor: Puns. In Japanese when I think of … [Read more...]
There are a lot of small things about a language that you might not even recognize until you're studying another one. I've known Pig Latin since I was a kid, but it never really occurred to me that other languages also had … [Read more...]