Tag: Buddhism

Each year the organization that publishes the Standardized Kanji Test (and the kanji practice for the Nintendo DS) announces the ...

There are a few places in Japan that are really special to me. Visiting Nikko, the collection of temples and ...

Japan got a famous visitor last week, as the Dalai Lama travelled through the heavily damaged Tohoku region, bringing words ...

J-List is located in Gunma Prefecture, a ho-hum place 100 km north of Tokyo that's famous for...well, nothing, really. Gunma ...

Over the weekend I took a trip into Tokyo to meet some friends from the States who were in Japan ...

These days nearly all anime is "filmed" in a real location, and you have a car and an obsessive personality, ...

I happened to see that the "manifesto" of Norwegian gunman and all-around asshat Anders Behring Breivik included words of praise ...

There's a big change in store for the J-List crew this summer: the impending opening of a Costco about ten ...

There was a huge crowd of people in Narita as my son and I passed through the airport, and I ...

Japan is a very different place from the U.S., and during my years as an ESL teacher I often found ...

Although only around 1-2% of Japanese report themselves as Christians, the cultural footprint of Christianity in Japan is much larger. ...

Although many Japanese will tell you they have no religion, when all is said and done Japan is a Buddhist ...

Last time I discussed the words wabi and sabi, two poetic terms from Zen Buddhism which basically tell us to ...

There's something about living in Japan that makes you appreciate things from another age, which are old and out-of-date by ...

One of my favorite images of Japan are the Daruma, the unique red dolls that are seen everywhere around this ...

Christmas is upon us, and soon the children will be nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of sugar-plums ...

Each year the organization that publishes the Standardized Kanji Test announces the "kanji of the year," the single character that ...

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the suicide death of one of the most enigmatic Japanese men in recent history, ...

A few days ago my Japanese wife's uncle finally succumbed to his illness and passed away at the age of ...

Hello again from Japan, where the zipper in your pants is known as the "window of society" (shakai no mado), ...

Japan is a Buddhist country, and this manifests itself in some interesting ways. Several national holidays are Buddhist for example, ...

Before I came to Japan in 1991, I took four years of Japanese at my alma mater, SDSU, so compared ...

Japan is probably the only country where eating too quietly will get comments from people around you. The correct way ...

Well, we're done with Anime Expo, and what a fun time it was. Thanks to everyone who came by to ...