Tag: culture

It's funny the way language can influence our perceptions of the seasons. Yesterday there was an annoying fly buzzing around ...

Japan is a country with no guns at all...or so I thought when I arrived here in 1991, and learned ...

Roughly speaking, Japan's historical relationship to China is similar to that of the West and ancient Rome and Greece: the ...

Part of Peter's Unified Theory of Japan is that to really understand a culture, you have to learn to love ...

One of the more unique aspects of Japanese animation has always been the tendency for certain series to feature nudity, ...

One of the first impressions foreigners living in Japan may get is that everything is "about death." This is likely ...

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

The word otaku has come to represent fans of anime, manga and 2D gaming culture, but the word is a ...

Sunday was April 1st, and we had a bit of fun, transforming the J-List front page into K-List ("you've got ...

Over the weekend I went down to Tokyo to meet with some friends and have Osaka-style kushi-katsu, which is meat ...

There are many differences between Japan and the U.S. For example, America has way more lawyers -- 1 for every ...

My son and I had a blast up in northern Japan. Our first stop was the city of Sapporo, the ...

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

Every once in a while I feel like I'm living inside an anime. One weekend I might find myself at ...

Last time I talked about various ways in which the Japanese custom of taking off shoes while at home has ...

Because of the popularity of anime and manga, certain aspects of Japan's popular culture have spread across the globe, and ...

One of the more enjoyable aspects of getting used to life in Japan, at least coming from California, is the ...

While not nearly as lavish as the Hollywood-level TV commercials created for the Superbowl, Japanese "CMs" are a lot of ...

I hope everyone in the States enjoyed the Superbowl. Unfortunately Sunday in the U.S. is Monday morning here in Japan ...

This Friday is Setsubun, a special Japanese day when fathers will put on paper masks and become an oni (devil ...

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

Yesterday I went to Akihabara on business, which is always more fun than sitting behind a computer screen at the ...

One aspect of Japan I've always been impressed with is the way popular culture is closely tied to history in ...

One of the best aspects of living in Japan is the honesty and integrity of Japanese people, and as a ...