Tag: Buddhism

Soon after arriving in Japan, I walked to a Seven Eleven to buy some onigiri, those triangle-shaped rice balls that ...

Some images just seem to sum up Japan for me somehow. Walking through a tunnel of torii arches in Kyoto, ...

I often write about Japan's falling birth rate since it's one of the more visible challenges the country is facing ...

There are many images of Japan that have become famous all over the world, like solemn temples with statues of ...

The U.S. is in "election mode" right now, so I thought I'd compare politics between America and Japan a bit. ...

Just as in the West, Japanese parents-to-be obsess over what name to give their new baby. In addition to reading ...

The currency used in Japan is yen, called en in Japanese, a word which literally means "circle," which was probably ...

I get a lot of requests from people planning trips to Japan asking for places they should visit. For visits ...

J-List has a popular Facebook page as well as a Twitter feed, and I sometimes like to throw out questions ...

Last time I talked about Obon, the Japanese Buddhist holiday in which families welcome the souls of departed family members ...

We're right in the middle of Obon (pronounced "oh, bone"), an important four-day Buddhist holiday during which Japanese return to ...

It can be easy to get the wrong idea about other countries, and it's not uncommon for people to carry ...

I've been enjoying my time in San Diego, zooming around the freeways as I drive to the J-List San Diego ...

Last time I wrote about the word gohan, which is Japanese for steamed rice that's ready to eat. (Uncooked rice ...

The U.S. presidential election is going strong, with candidates trading barbs in the news media about their various policies. Elections ...

One of my favorite images of Japan are Japanese arches, called torii, written with kanji characters that mean "where the ...

The Japanese can be somewhat superstitious compared to Americans. It's common in department stores to see people getting their palms ...

Although many Japanese will deny having a religion, when all is said and done Japan is a very Buddhist nation. ...

One show I've been enjoying this season has been Rinne no Lagrange, a fun-fun moe mecha anime with some yuri ...

The Japanese are fond of assigning titles to certain days, often based on phonetics, for example February 9 is Niku-no-hi ...

Akihabara is the area of Tokyo famous for its Electric Town shopping district and for being the international center of ...

It's funny the way some Japanese cultural icons spread to the outside world, eventually becoming famous symbols of Japan. Growing ...

There are many benefits to being an American expat in Japan. When I go to concerts I'm usually tall enough ...

Over the weekend my family and I attended the Christmas Candlelight Service at my daughter's school, a mission-kei (kei meaning ...