Tofugu.com – Wonky Japanese Language and Culture

In the last couple months, we’ve done two Flutterscape.com giveaways. This is the third, last, and by far best in the series. You’ve gotten your hands on Cupmen and Midori Otoko, but now it’s time for you to choose what you want to win from the awesome Japanese products site. Read more…

I’m guessing a lot of you know how to type in Japanese (hint: you don’t need a Japanese keyboard), but did you know about all the “hidden” special characters you can type out while you’re in Japanese input mode? You aren’t only limited to hiragana, katakana, romaji, and kanji. There are a score of other weird characters you can use to make your text a lot more interesting, you know? Here’s a lot of them (mostly the good ones) with an explanation of what they are and how to get them to show up! Read more…

As if Twitter itself wasn’t a big enough time waster, right? This is a Japanese flash game (so is this) that takes your Twitter icon and pits you against another Twitter icon. After you’ve chosen the opponents, Twitter icons are placed on the battlefield, and they break up into a bunch of tiny little pieces, which charge at each other and duke it out. What I learned from all this? The Tofugu Twitter icon is very, very weak. Read more…

P.S. Stick around to the end of this post, where you can win a sexy green USB man.

I bet a lot of you know all about “rock, paper, scissors,” the other way that Japanese people make decisions, but did you know about amidakuji? When you need to assign people or things to an equal number of outcomes, amidakuji is the best way to do it… plus, it kind of reminds me of all those pipes mario smokes has to walk through. Read more…

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Mmmm, fukubukuro. One of my favorite things about New Years in Japan. The idea behind fukubukuro is simple yet enticing. Stores put stuff in bags, put a price on it, and don’t tell you what’s in there. All you know is that you’re getting an awesome deal even though you may not get quite what you want. Sometimes you get more than you bargained for, sometimes you don’t. That’s why fukubukuro is fun.

I know it isn’t New Years right now, but as you know I’m moving in order to make Tofugu my full time job. I’ve also decided to simplify my life. I don’t want all this stuff anymore. I was going to sell it on Craigslist, but thought of something a little more exciting (in my mind, anyways). That’s why I’ll be selling Tofukubukuro, while supplies last, which are small (or large) boxes of my stuff. You don’t know what you’re going to get (click through to get more information on what you’ll probably get), everything’s the same price, and it’s a fun little gamble. Plus, the money is going someplace pretty good, I think, and you could get some neat things out of it. Read more…

Because it’s a Saturday, and because I just know you need the inspiration, I’ve put together twelve images that will surely inspire you to jump on the kanji train. Choo choo. Kanji train coming in for a landing (yeah, the kanji train flies). Using the absolutely awesome online voluntary sweatshop-wage labor tool Mechanical Turk, I’ve been able to procure some inspiration for you. What I did was simple: I put a job up, asking people to write something that was both inspirational and kanji-related, and then take a picture of themselves. Of course, that got all sorts of interesting, and very uninspiring results, but at the very least it should give you a case of the chuckles. Read more…

If you’ve been reading Tofugu for a while, you’ll know that I can’t pass up a good Godzilla story, especially one that contains haikus as well. GodzillaHaiku is a Tumbler Blog that simply contains images from Godzilla films and overlays them with haikus. Kind of feels like a cross between LOLcats and UnhappyHipster, but a lot more radioactive, if you catch my drift. 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…

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…