As long as I can remember, Pink Tentacle has been one of my favorite Japan blogs out there, and is one of the few that I can recommend both to people who know a ton about Japan, and to people who’ve never even heard of sushi.

It sounds cheesy to describe the feel of a website, but there’s no better way to describe what Pink Tentacle is all about. Take some science fiction, mix it with a retro feel and a good heaping of art and design, and you basically have what Pink Tentacle is all about.

The site dives deep into whatever subject it takes on, finding obscure materials from decades ago. Pink Tentacle is the only place I know of where you can find an illustrated anatomy of Godzilla enemies, post-apocalyptic landscape illustrations of Tokyo, and vintage PSA posters from the Tokyo subway.

After the horrific 3/11 earthquake and tsunami, Pink Tentacle understandably began shifting its content more and more about the aftermath of the disaster. Instead of the sort of coverage of 3/11 that was typical from major media outlets, Pink Tentacle covered 3/11 in a very Pink Tentacle-y way, with art and mythical history about the disaster.

Then, on April 19, 2011, Pink Tentacle went dark. After regularly updating for five years, the site, and all associated social media accounts just stopped updating.

As far as I can tell, nobody knows what happened. Why did Pink Tentacle stop updating? There are plenty of theories: something terrible happened to the author because of 3/11; the author took up another cause in the wake of 3/11; the person behind Pink Tentacle just lost interest.

But nobody knows for sure. We’re all equally clueless.

I’ve tried to get in touch with whomever is behind Pink Tentacle, but haven’t had any luck. I’ve tried emailing Pink Tentacle to no response, and it’s been hard to find any other ways of communication. The site’s whois information is obfuscated, meaning that it’s extremely difficult to find any identifying information about who registered the site.

I miss Pink Tentacle a lot, but I take some comfort in knowing that I’m not the only one who misses Pink Tentacle, as evidenced by the numerous posts online begging for it to come back, and by the nearly 200 comments left on the last post on the site.

Pink Tentacle, where are you?

It’s heartwarming to see commenters on Pink Tentacle continue to leave messages for Pink Tentacle years after it went dark. On holidays, people wish Pink Tentacle a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

The domain pinktentacle.com expires at the end of this year, on December 31^st. It’ll be interesting to see whether the website expires and gets snatched up by a domain squatter, or if somebody, somewhere decides to renew the domain and let us all wonder for a while longer.

Maybe you’ve heard of DeviantArt. It’s a big art website that people like everywhere except Japan. Even though DeviantArt has some great artists (no denying that!), DeviantArt also feels so amateur. Pixiv is also a site for artists, but the overall feel is a little higher-quality. Oh, and Japanese-style. I’ve never been able to get into DeviantArt, personally, but I do think Pixiv is pretty frickin’ awesome, and I think some of you will love it too. Makes me wish I could draw better than this.

What Is Pixiv?

This is what the current “Japanese” Pixiv looks like

Way back a long time ago, when you and I were just wee babes, the creator of Pixiv as it is today, Takanori-san, made Pixiv because he was having trouble keeping track of all the artists he enjoyed following. So, he was like “ugh, I hate having to keep track of all this, I’ll make a site that allows my favorite artists to post their art up on a site where I can see it all in one place” … and Pixiv was born.

As it turned out that there were a lot of great Japanese artists out there, just wishing they could do the same thing, and lots and lots of Japanese artists joined to share their work. Because of all the Japanese artists in Japan, as well as all the people who loved looking at those artist’s art, Pixiv became one of the fastest growing websites and startups in Japan. It’s really that popular (Japan loves their art), even though most non-Japanese have never heard of it. As of right now, Pixiv gets 20-30 thousand new pictures uploaded every day and has around 22 million pictures total.

It’s become a place for both professional artists and aspiring artists alike to post their things. There are people who create their own manga series on the site, and people wait eagerly for the next page or section to come out. Text more your thing? You can also submit your novels or stories for people to read and enjoy.

Sometimes, you even hear about an aspiring artist getting picked up by studios / publishers, and then they’re no longer “aspiring” anymore. Seriously, like one in three Tofugu people who email me are like “I’m gonna be a mangaka when I grow up, blah blah blah.” If that’s you, then this is probably one of the more realistic ways of getting there. Step 1: Become an awesome and/or incredible artist (the most important step). Step 2: Post your stuff up on Pixiv and get really popular. Step 3: Become a Japanese mangaka slave.

Being a mangaka isn’t what it used to be…

Now, there is a lot of amateur-level stuff on here too, but the overall quality is pretty amazing, I think, especially considering the number of people using and posting on the site. I actually went ahead and did a survey of non-Japanese artists who use Pixiv (in its current, Japanese form), because I wanted to know what actual artist-users thought about Pixiv (because they’re already using it even though it’s a Japanese site). They tend to concur with my feelings on quality.

You can find a lot of professional artists here, and this isn’t something that you can find anywhere. It makes me happy to know that I can give some encouragement to my fav artist

I tell my friends that some of the best anime art can be found at Pixiv only, and that it’s well worth browsing if they don’t mind using a guide to get around.

The Only Place Were I Could Find Really Good Quality Manga And Anime

You are able to see other pictures that amazing artists draw. Also I find the art more interesting than any other art I have seen.

Most of the site does tend to be drawings in Japanese (Manga/Anime) style art (with a few exceptions), though there are a decent amount of aspiring novelists posting things up as well. Writing can also be an art, after all.

As of right now, while I write this, the original Japanese-site (Pixiv.net) is only partly in English. But, pretty soon there will be an English (and soon after, Chinese) version of Pixiv, making it “international.” Want to get in on that action early before everyone else? Keep reading.

Pixiv Is Going International

You can see a preview of the International version of the new Pixiv right now in image form (above). If you want to see it in real life, you’ll have to be one of the first 222 people to sign up for the Tofugu alpha testers list below. If you’re not going to use it, don’t take someone else’s spot though, please!

For a long time, Pixiv was Japanese-language-only. But, Pixiv started noticing a lot of international traffic, both from artists who wanted to post up their work on Pixiv, and also from people just looking at and enjoying all the artwork.

About a year ago, they made it so a lot of the menu items were in English (when they detect you’re from an English speaking country). That was a start, and made it easier for international users to use the site, but now they’ve kindly let me know (and provided closed alpha-access keys to you, the Japanese-art-savvy Tofugu reader) about their international version, Pixiv.com, coming out very soon.

The site itself is going to be in a much more “international” design (not to beat up on Japanese web design too much… but it’s generally pretty old fashioned), and have all the same art and user information as Pixiv.net (the Japanese version). So, everything you’ve loved about Pixiv.net will be synced over and be exactly the same – only the interface will be different (and easier to use for us Muggles). So, content consists of the same good stuff, it’s only the way you access that content that’s different (which is good news). From what I’ve seen so far, it’s better than the original (in my opinion), but I’m kind of a snob when it comes to this sort of thing.

Tofugu Readers Get Special Closed Alpha Access

Sure, you could sign up for alpha access normally, but then you’d have to wait in the back of the line with all those  chumps who don’t read Tofugu. Luckily for you, we have special priority access for you guys. While it doesn’t necessarily mean you get to sign up right this minute, it does mean you get in before anyone else. Pixiv said people should start getting invites around Christmas, so, consider this a present from Santa (just as long as it isn’t this Pixiv Predator Santa). Anyhoo, here’s how you get into the alpha.

1. Go to Pixiv.com and add “tofugu” in as your priority code (or, alternatively, you can just click here).
2. Go check out their Twitter Accounts (Pixiv English and Pixiv Regular).

That’s all there is to do for now. Just know that it’s the first 222 people who sign up through this link that get in to the closed alpha, so if you want in, you ought to sign up fast (these’ll go pretty quick, and I have no way of knowing how many people have signed up for closed alpha at any given point). If you’re not even a little excited about Pixiv, you should probably let someone else have your spot. But if you are interested, definitely sign up now and not later, or you’ll have to wait until who-knows-when to get in (probably until they switch to beta or public mode).

So that’s about it! Pixiv.net is going international with Pixiv.com. If you like art, especially Japanese-style art, then this is great news. If not, well… then I still love you, I guess, if I have to.

What Do You Think?

How do you think they’ll do in the rest of the world? I think with the popularity of anime, manga, and everything Japan here in the US (and other countries around the world as well, I’m sure), it has a pretty good chance. A lot of aspiring artists in non-Japan countries also tend to put their focus on anime-style art, probably because that’s what they enjoy / that’s what they grew up with. Pixiv in the rest of the world may be a somewhat niche thing for a while, but I can see them growing pretty steadily outside of Japan as more people find out about the site. It has quality, it has content, and it does everything pretty well. It’ll be pretty fun to see what they end up doing.

P.S. Speaking of works of art, you should follow Tofugu on Twitter.
P.P.S. More into the Avant-Garde stuff? Follow us on Facebook or Google+

Japanese Castle Explorer

japanese-castle-explorer.com is a site that’s all about Japanese castles (duh). That being said, it’s not just any old site. It has to be one of the best Japanese castle related sites out there (are there any others, even?). It’s sort of a combination of maps, photographs, and information, all put together very nicely, though I think my favorite feature is the interactive map. I’m more of a visual big picture kind of guy, I guess.

Zoomed way out, you can see a ton of castles. To get the most out of it, though, you’ll want to zoom in.

Now there’s more map than castle, which is a good thing. He uses different images for different kinds of castle types / conditions. You can see very quickly whether or not it’s an original castle or a reconstruction, whether it’s just buildings now, or finally if it’s just ruins.

If you click on a castle on the map, more information comes up in the top right. You can get some quick facts and info on the particular castle. Want to zoom in on it and get its exact location? Hit the “Best View” button.

While the map is my favorite part of this site, there’s more info on each individual castle as well. For example, if I click “Read More” after clicking on a castle, I can see quite a bit more on the castle, its history, as well as a bunch of pictures of the castle itself. My absolute favorite thing, though, is the very Japanese-video-game-esque stats-graph thing.

Osaka castle is obviously some sort of last-boss. You’ll want to level up for a while on lesser castles before coming here.

So, if you love castles, especially Japanese ones… or even if you just have a moderate interest in visiting a castle or two in Japan at some point, definitely check out japanese-castle-explorer.com. It’s a great combination of technology, information, and photography.

Oh, what? Am I like some sort of castle or something? Because… you just laid siege to my heart.

P.S. Scale our walls on Twitter

P.P.S. Go for a Trojan Horse instead on Facebook

1. Google Image Search

A while back, the Official Google Blog had a really cool post about how to use Google Image Search as a visual dictionary. The basic premise is that if you’re talking to someone who speaks another language, and you’re both trying to figure out a certain word, you can just use Google Image Search to figure out what it is you’re both talking about. Since you can search in both languages (and get pretty good results), you can use Google as a sort of visual translator or dictionary. For example, say you’re both trying to say the word “penguin.”

In English, you just say “penguin,” but in Japanese you would say ペンギン (pengin). Even though it’s a loan word, the pronunciation is different enough to fool two beginning language learners.

“Is it a bird?”
“Yes…”
“Is it black and white?”
“Yes”
“A Penguin?”
“No, a Pengin. hmm.”
“A what? Let’s just search an image…”

And yes, that conversation was totally and completely ripped from the Google blog. Sue me… actually, please don’t. [Google Images]

2. Figuring out words based search results

Maybe about a year ago, I was trying to remember the verb that went with piano in order to say “play the piano.” There’s some weird rules when it comes to instrument playing verbs that mean “to play,” and I couldn’t find a definitive answer via my dictionary. Then I realized I could use Google to my advantage.

I thought I’d try the verb “hiku” (ひく) which is how you say “to play” when it comes to stringed instruments. Pianos are kind of funny because they have strings, but they’re hidden strings and you don’t directly touch them, so I was wondering if maybe it was an exception. I typed it into Google and was able to find a plethora of phrases which included ピアノをひく (piano wo hiku), which meant I could safely assume it was the right result. Other things that I tried had fewer search results (Google shows the number of results, which can be a good indication of whether you’re right or wrong), or didn’t have the entire phrase all together (and all the words were spread out amongst the title and content, which of course means the phrase was wrong as well). This is a really useful tool if you just want to make sure something is correct, and can even be used to emulate and borrow someone else’s sentences. [Google Search]

3. Google Video (aka YouTube)

If you’re always looking for cute Japanese cat videos, then this is for you. Really, it’s almost the same as the image search, so I’m not going to spend much time talking about it, though there are a few more neat little pluses you can get out of video that you can’t in image.

Of course, with video you’re going to get a better visual than if you did an image search (though it will take longer if you actually watch these things). One perk is that there’s a decent chance you’ll be able to hear the actual word used in action, or you can listen / watch the word you’re “looking up” in context, which can be valuable as well. Really, though, if you want to get a word in context, it might just be better to look it up at smart.fm or somewhere not so Googly. [YouTube]

4. Google’s Translated Search

This is a really really cool tool. You can actually search for something in your native language (let’s say English), and Google translate your search and then show you results from the language you want to search in (let’s say Japanese). That’s not where it ends, however. It will show two columns of search results. One column will be the original Japanese content, and the other column will be the translated English version. This means you get a side-by-side translation of your search results, which also means you can look up all kinds of things (and read them) while at the same time targeting only Japanese content.

Of course, be sure to take these things with a grain of salt. Once you get beyond one-word translations, you can really start getting into trouble. Still, this is a great tool to look words and phrases up, and see what Google thinks the translation is. It’s just a great way to double check a word or translation that you already have a decent grasp of. Better yet, it’s in context! [Google Translated Search]

5. Call someone in Japan with Google Voice

If you’re cool like me and you got an invite to Google Voice, then you’ll know that you can call people on the uber-cheap. Now, this totally depends on you having people you can call without being incredibly creepy (and you should probably do a quick google search to see what time it is right now in Tokyo), but I’ll leave that part up to you. It’s only 3 cents a minute to call someone in Japan via Google voice, so if you know someone that’s willing to answer your Penguin translation questions, then you’re gold. Oh, and while you’re doing it you can use Google image search to confirm things, right?

And yes, another option is Skype, but we’re talking about Google right now! Expect to see a “call me” button somewhere on the side of this blog sometime soon, too. Google Voice will let you leave me messages. I look forward to all your drunken phone calls!

6. Google’s Advanced Search

If you feel like you’ve got the “normal” search stuff down, then maybe it’s time to go advanced. This is a great way to learn all the Google shortcuts that will get you better results down the road. If you find yourself looking for a word that has a lot of search results you don’t want, you can search minus things that have that word. You can add more words to narrow your search down. You can choose the language you want to search in. The list goes on and on.

Of course, how you use this all depends on what you’re looking for, but it’s a great way to narrow things down and look for the exact word, phrase, or whatever to get the results you want. [Google Advanced Search]

7. Translating Your Docs and E-mails

Maybe it’s just me, but I use Google docs (and gmail) all the time. I live in both of those places. At work, we use Google Docs instead of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc. Working at eduFire means I get a decent amount of e-mails and docs in other languages. Google is my somewhat inaccurate translating savior. There is a feature in both g-docs and gmail (in gmail you have to add it through gmail labs) that lets you translate your content in any language that Google does translations (which is a lot).

Here’s the original message (above)

And here’s the translated message (above)

First of all, the translation pretty garbage, and secondly, if you’re learning Japanese this isn’t something you necessarily want to rely on. It can be a good resource for beginners / intermediates to get an idea of what something is about, before diving in and really studying it to pull out a real translation, though. Also great for penpals! Couple this up with Rikaichan and you’ve got yourself something golden. [Google Docs, Google Mail]

8. Google Translate Japanese to English

I’m not a huge fan of translation services, as you’ve probably already figured out. They make you lazy and they’re usually quite off. Still, I have to admit, as long as you aren’t doing anything too sensitive to painful translation mistakes, you can use these things to get the gist of something before you work out a better translation.

I put my American culture website Koichi弁 through the translator, and it came out nice and funny. Maybe it’s my strange Japanese… though most likely it’s the translator. Still, it gives you a basic picture of what’s going on.

If you do use Google Translate, I’d recommend translating things one word at a time (just like looking up words in a dictionary). There are some better dictionary services out there, but as I said before, today the Goog gets the spotlight. [Google Translate]

9. Google Calendar to Schedule Your Studies

If you’re as busy as me, calendars and e-mails rule your life. I highly recommend getting a calendar to everyone, and gCal is a good one.

You can set up reminder alerts (perhaps for your Japanese classes?), you can block off Japanese self-study sessions, remind yourself to finish up that flashcard set,  or give yourself an hour to write a Japanese journal entry to be corrected by native Japanese speakers. Staying organized is a great thing when it comes to studying, and it helps keep you on track (and helps you to set goals!). Did you know that people who write down their goals are statistically 10x more successful than those that don’t? [Google Calendar]

10. Use Google to Find Other Search Engines That do Similar Things

Of course, Google isn’t the only one that can do all these things. There’s Bing, Yahoo, Ask, Wolfram Alpha, and so on. All these other search engines have similar features, and they come up with slightly different results, depending on what you’re trying to do. This means that if Google isn’t doing it for you, then one of the other search engines may be able to give you a hand.

I hope this guide helped you, and I know there are a ton more ways to use Google to your advantage when studying Japanese. What are your favorite Google tricks, whether they are listed here or not?

The Best Jerry, the Best! (anyone catch this reference, or am I old?)

At Tofugu, we don’t do a very good job keeping you up to date on Japanese news. In fact, we do a pretty horrid job, because that’s not really our niche (though it’s hard to pass up the occasional fun story). There are a few sites that thankfully do a good job at keeping up with Japanese news, but they tend to be overflowing with content and it’s hard to keep up, even for an RSS guru like myself. That’s why I love JapanSoc, and you should to.

JapanSoc is a lot like Digg, except it’s only for Japan-related things. Better than Digg, it has a great (friendly) community, it focuses on a specific niche (Japan), and works really really well. Whenever I want to know what’s going on in Japan (and only want to know the interesting / important things), this is where I go – otherwise there’s just too much noise, and I can’t keep up!

Click on this image to see it biiigggg

Of course, if you’re only interested in a certain aspect of Japan, JapanSoc’s got you covered there as well. There are different categories that allow you to follow certain things (like language learning, otaku culture, business, news, etc), which makes it even more useful to those of you that only want to see what’s important to you, and you alone.

Though, I gotta say, my favorite feature is the rankings. By Soc’ing things, friending people, and being a part of the community, you get points, which translate to sumo rankings. Sumo rankings. Right now I’m a Jonokuchi, which basically translates to small fry… but I will rise through the ranks, just wait and see, just wait and see. Come friend me and we’ll sumo it out geek-style. It’s on, Donkey Kong.

Anyways, big props to JapanSoc for making my Japanese news reading life simple and easy. Go give them an RSS subscribe too, if you swing that way. Oh, and if you stumble across this post in Japan Soc, give it a Soc (a point)! Don’t forget to Soc all the other cool news you see, too, to help good things get to the front page, otherwise I won’t know what to read!

I played around on this website for way too long. Thanks to Cscout, I came across the website kyokasho.net, which allows you to choose from several school subjects, and then doodle all over the pictures of historical figures. I remember those days. They weren’t all that long ago. I would ignore the teacher (maybe that’s why I became a Japanese Studies major?) and do all sorts of horrible things to my textbooks. One thing I remember doing was erasing numbers in my math books (those pen erasers were good for this) and rewrite the numbers in the same font so the poor sap who got my book the next year could be as confused as I was. When I wasn’t feeling like such a horrible person, I’d doodle on the faces of historical figures. This is exactly what this website allows you to do. Some folks get pretty ridiculously creative. It’s great.

When you go to kyokasho.net, you’ll see the most popular additions, as well as the most recent. If you scroll down to the very bottom, you’ll see different classroom subjects. If you click on one of these, you’ll get a gallery of pictures to choose from to do whatever you’d like with. When you finally choose an image, you’ll be able to use a graphite colored pen, a red pen, or an eraser. It’s amazing what some people do with such simple tools. It certainly beats my tie fighters flying in to knock around George Washington, or whoever.

Once you’re done, hit this button to save it. You’ll even be able to view a start-to-finish of how it was drawn. Really cool for some of the really complicated ones.

Sadly, all the text that make up the “textbooks” are from Wikipedia (which I suppose makes sense when it comes to copyright issues). Textbooks in Japan are pretty universal across the nation. Usually you’ll only see a few different textbooks in a particular subject, so the Japanese education experience is often shared in areas all over Japan. I was hoping for a little bit of that, but it wasn’t meant to be. Still, don’t let that stop you from having some fun. Here, I even made a Tofugu one.

And closer up…

Pretty lame. If anyone else wants to do one that has anything to do with Tofugu, I’ll stick it up in the fanart section of the site :)

If you’re not particularly interested in going to kyokasho.net, and want to stay here, I thought I’d collect some of my favorite images for you to view right here. There’s hundreds of thousands more on the actual website, though, so I suggest you go enjoy it yourself! Seriously, this website is one of those websites that would really only do this well in Japan.

I bet some of you are pretty creative. Feel free to link us your creations in the comments!