Like every nation, Japan has a segment of people from other countries living there, although at just 1.5% of the ...
Well, Otakon is over, and it was a real blast. As the premier anime convention on the East Coast, it's ...
I'm enjoying my time here in Annapolis, as we get ready for Otakon, the wildest anime convention on the East ...
I've written about how Japan's society often seems to follow behind the U.S. in many areas, usually running about a ...
One observation I've made about Japan in the 15+ years I've spent there is, they pay a little more attention ...
The Fourth of July celebration was a lot of fun, a rare treat for me since Anime Expo usually falls ...
Japan is a fun place -- the people are nice, the sights are beautiful, and you get to have wacky ...
We're still here at Anime Expo in Long Beach, and it's been a real blast. Monday is the last day ...
Most people know that the Japanese put the ending -san on the end of names for politeness. There are quite ...
The other day I went into the living room to see my kids glued to the TV even though it ...
Japan is the land of the boom, and you never know what will be popular next. Right now the country ...
The teaching of eikaiwa, or English conversation, is quite an industry in Japan, and there are many schools where people ...
The Star Wars Celebration IV convention is in full swing, and here in Los Angeles tens of thousands of fans ...
What a difference an elongated vowel can make. Japanese is quite different from English, having had a totally unique developmental ...
Anime and comic books -- which are collectively referred with the term "manga" in Japanese -- are an inseparable part ...
I've written before about how the meinichi (命日), the anniversary of a person's death, is very important in a Buddhist ...
Japan is nothing if not the land of contradictions. On the one hand, society has been organized in a vertical ...
I was making up some Japanese business cards for one of my employees yesterday, trying different layouts and fonts to ...
Kanji (KAHN-gee), the Chinese characters that the Japanese use to express most words in writing, is fascinating to Westerners because ...
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 ...
Yesterday was time for my annual top-to-bottom physical, called Ningen Dock, a name that implies a human (ningen) "drydock" where ...
One way to compare Japan's more structured society with the U.S. and Europe is to look at the standardized Japanese ...
Well, Otakon has passed and we're safely back in San Diego, our long, multi-stage vacation across America finally over. After ...
Well, our RV trip to the Grand Canyon is finally over. We had great fun and the kids were amazed ...
