Tag: family

Part of mastering a foreign language involves coming up with strategies that help you trick your brain into learning. In ...

Japan continues to have problems with a type of fraud known as furikome sagi (translatable as "Transfer the Money Now!" ...

Yesterday we went to visit my wife's uncle in the hospital. Making a hospital visit to a sick friend or ...

One thing that's fun about having kids is all the creative observations they make. Like the time my daughter saw ...

Sometimes I think my family would make the basis for an interesting anime series, along the lines of Darling wa ...

When you think of traditional images from the Edo Period, firemen probably don't immediately spring to mind. And yet for ...

Most Western nations are facing the problem of ageing populations, but Japan is really leading the pack, with its combination ...

"Children who are able to greet others properly won't be steered wrong in life." This is one of the many ...

If you love "corn potage," then get to Japan as fast as you can, since people here just can't get ...

I have a rather strange problem: I don't know my own kids. Or rather, I know the half that speaks ...

Languages are interesting because each one has its own unique features. For example, double negatives like "I didn't see nothing" ...

Speaking of graves, Japan is in the middle of Obon (pronounced "oh, bone!"), a three-day Buddhist holiday to remember the ...

When is a graveyard likely to be filled with tourists snapping pictures? When it's a gaijin bochi, or "foreigners' graveyard," ...

Japanese names are generally written in kanji, the Chinese characters introduced to Japan around the 6th century A.D. Family names, ...

As a long-time anime fan, it's been interesting to see how the characters in anime and dating-sim games change and ...

If you've listened to spoken Japanese at all you've probably heard the word desu, often pronounced with the last syllable ...

If you ever want to appreciate your local Denny's, I advise you to go live in Japan for a few ...

Sometimes I think that no one is happier with the changes that have been brought on by the arrival of ...

One of my favorite movies is Pleasantville, a fun film about two modern-day teenagers who get transported inside a 1950s-era ...

The most successful motor vehicle in history isn't the Toyota Corolla, and it's isn't the Ford F-Series pickup, or even ...

Sunday nights at our house is time for Chibi Maruko-chan (Little Maruko), one of the most popular anime shows in ...

So picture this. Suddenly you get a phone call, and a young voice says, "It's me, it's me," as if ...

Have you had Tuna Spaghetti recently? I did for lunch, and it was really good, a fresh marinara sauce with ...

I write often about how harmonious Japan appears to foreigners living here. Seen from our special position as outsiders (which ...