Tofugu.com – Wonky Japanese Language and Culture

Japanese hospital experiences are known to be a little… wild… but when I saw this chart I thought it had some pretty interesting information in it. The main goal of this chart was to show how ridiculous America’s per person spending on health care is (while still doing pretty mediocre in terms of life), but of course my eyes were immediately drawn to Japan’s data. Read more…

Japan’s jobless rate is currently at 5.2%, which is a record high (way better than America’s, but still). There is a 15.7% poverty rate, one of the highest amongst industrialized nations. 15,800 people live on the streets of Japan (according to the government – in reality this number is probably higher with 10,000+ in Tokyo alone). To sum things up, things aren’t all that great, and the recession is hitting Japan pretty hard as well. If you are poor in Japan, however, there are a couple of interesting options for you. Better than living with the monkeys, anyways. Read more…

Unicef just scared every little child into not washing their hands by coming out with this dance video with “renowned Japanese dancer Kaiji Moriyama” who “choreographed a dance for a public service announcement designed to teach children the principles of good hand washing.”

This video was made because of the swine flu, and because children don’t wash their hands. Also, apparently this video thought hand washing just wasn’t fun enough either, which is why they’ve turned it into a dance. GREAT. Read more…

Michael over at Gakuranman.com is hosting this month’s “Japan Blog Matsuri” – to be honest, I’ve never taken part in one of these (kudos to Michael for all the reminder e-mails and Tweets), and I’m already breaking every single rule he put down. “Your blog post can’t be more than 200 words… You can only pick one thing… I’m Briiiiitish” (you have to pretend I’m talking in a fabulous British accent for that one). But, really though, you should go check out the Gakuranman and all his blogging adventures, because it’s a pretty neat site, which somehow relates bioluminescence to Japan. So here goes with the actual post (these words don’t count towards my word limit, yo!), 10 absolutely crazy things about Japan: Read more…

This article was written by Caitlin O’Mara, who has worked for three years in the Tohoku revion of Japan as an assistant English Teacher. She studies Japanese in her free time and works as a contract web geek, providing that a BA in East Asian Studies is not entirely worthless. She can be found at caitlinomara.com.

If you’ve watched the episode of Naruto where he tries to kancho Kakashi, you should know what I’m going to talk about. If you’re unfamiliar with this “fun” childrens’ game, it’s pretty simple: put your hands together with your index fingers out and try to ram them up your best friend (or even better, teacher’s) butt. Not only is this this a harmless game for your friends, it’s also a great deal of fun to do to your teachers. Read more…

I just came across this article (which we’ll talk about more below), which made me think… why are you so lazy!? Of course, I’m only talking to those of you who don’t know how to use chopsticks (or hashi, in Japanese). If you’re heading to Japan (or most Asian countries) you should probably get on that, or just use one of these horrible inventions down below. It’s like putting kids with minor learning disabilities into special classes to make things easier on them. Not so good in the long run. Read more…

I got this tip from Joyce, a college professor, and expert in Godzilla studies (not even kidding). She uses this as part of a lesson on cultural insight. Sounds like a fun class. Read on!

It’s funny enough to put something into an online translator to change it to Japanese, then putting it back through the opposite way to see what it comes up with, but this is on a whole new level. This is actually a version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer made just for Japan, culture insight included. Let’s take a look: Read more…

Now that I’m back from Hawaii, I finally had the chance to wade through all the emails I decided to ignore until now (sorry if that was you!). A decent number of them were people worried about racism in Japan; mainly, they were worried that people in Japan would treat them poorly because they were, well, gaijin (that means foreigner, in case you didn’t know).

A few of these emails made reference to the infamous “no gaijin” signs which are supposedly littered all around Japan. When I searched around the internet for more information on this, I was surprised with what I found… Read more…

As much as I want to be outrageously snarky in this post, I don’t think I can bring myself to do it. After all, social anxiety disorder is pretty serious stuff, especially in Japan, the birthplace of the hikikomori (引き籠もり or “pulling away”) phenomenon. In an attempt to help out those who are uncomfortable in social situations, Avex has introduced a DVD titled Miterudake (ミテルだけ) or “Just Looking”. The DVD is labeled as “interactive”, but there are really only two activities that users are expected to perform: Read more…