Tag: culture

One of the more surprising aspects of Japanese popular culture is the number of stories featuring characters of questionable gender, ...

It's always interesting to explore the "when worlds collide" moments between Japan and the U.S. Tomo, the J-List employee who ...

It's fun to study the history of the memes that pop up in anime. Every time you watch an onsen ...

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the return of Okinawa to Japan by the U.S., and there was a ceremony ...

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 ...