I've written before about the psychology of ex-pats living in Japan, such as the the Three Stages of Eye Aversion ...
There are naturally many large and small forms of culture shock a person experiences when they go go live in ...
Well, Otakon is over, and it was a real blast. As the premier anime convention on the East Coast, it's ...
Hello and happy Friday the 13th, often considered to be a day of good luck in Japan, since many festivals ...
Our plan to "reform" (remodel) our house in Japan is continuing apace, as we prepare to redo our bath area, ...
The Star Wars Celebration IV convention is in full swing, and here in Los Angeles tens of thousands of fans ...
Names in Japanese are quite different from what we're usually used to in the West. Right off the bat, the ...
Japan is the land of the "boom," and you never know when some new thing is going to come out ...
The local cell phone industry has been turned on its ear by the news that Europe's Vodafone was quitting the ...
Anyone who's ever worked in a Japanese organization for any length of time probably knows the frustration of having a ...
Television (which turns 80 today) in Japan can be quite entertaining, and sometimes its fun to sit back on the ...
You probably know that they do Valentine's Day a little differently in Japan than in the West. Here, Feb. 14th ...
Japan has a reputation for being a peaceful place with very little in the way of violence, giant monsters emerging ...
Bathing is very important in Japan, and almost all Japanese take time to enjoy a slow bath at the end ...
As an expat American living away from my home country, it's sometimes interesting to ask the Japanese people around me ...
Kanji (KAHN-gee), the Chinese characters that the Japanese use to express most words in writing, is fascinating to Westerners because ...
Just as Americans are accustomed to thinking of our country as a union of semi-soverign states, each with its own ...
Last night we went to a friend's house to have one of my favorite dishes, nabe (NAH-beh), a word that ...
One social problem that's being talked about more and more in Japan is hikikomori (hee-kee-KOH-MOH-ree, 引きこもり), a Japanese term that ...
I talked last time about the invisible lines drawn between the three social groups in a Japanese school or organization, ...
Typhoon season has arrived in Japan, with Typhoon No. 13 (named "Shanshan" by the American weather service, although no one ...
Hello again from Japan, where, when two people say the same thing at the same time, they're then supposed to ...
Saturday was "new keitai day" for our family, and we all went down to the local "au" store to get ...
One complex subject in Japan is that of gift giving. The Japanese are very much into exchanging gifts, and the ...
