Month: December 2008

In my city there's a bridal shop that sells the most beautiful wedding kimonos for happy Japanese brides to wear, ...

I've started watching an anime series with the rather unique name of A Certain Magical Index, which is about magic-using ...

For whatever reason, there are certain subjects I never managed to study during high school or college, including chemistry, philosophy, ...

My "iPhone diet" is going surprisingly well, and I've managed to lose 12 kg (25 lbs) so far. On this ...

Poor Prime Minister Aso is really getting beaten up in the press these days. His approval rating is in the ...

Have you ever noticed that Japanese girls sometimes have very crooked teeth? Because the Japanese really never got into the ...

Every time I turn on the TV, it seems, one of Japan's big four beer companies is releasing some groundbreaking ...

Although Japan is certainly not a perfect place, in general there are benefits for gaijin who come here to live. ...

Part of learning to read and write kanji involves learning about the building blocks (called radicals) that make up the ...

Every year dictionary publisher U-CAN announces the most popular buzzwords for the past year, slang which appears suddenly and is ...

One of the things I like best about living in Japan is the food. From traditional types of Japanese cuisine ...

I've been in "teacher mode" a lot these days, spending time helping my daughter write essays in Japanese. She'll be ...

Christmas is approaching, and in Japan that means one thing: lots of pretty twinkling lights. Throughout the country there are ...

Last time I talked about the new Japanese "lay jury" system, which aims to have citizen jurors take part in ...

Like most countries, Japan has its unsavory elements, including organized crime. Japan's version of the Italian mafia are the yakuza ...

An era has come to an end in Japan: the "0-Series" Bullet Train, first launched back in 1964, has made ...

"Overseas dramas" are as popular as ever here in Japan, and thousands of fans follow American series like Damages or ...