Tag: gaijin

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

One aspect of the Japanese is that they don't show their emotions as freely or in the same ways that ...

As you can imagine, Japan has changed a lot since we founded our little company offering wacky bento boxes and ...

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

In my Twitter feed I post various things, including new items added to the J-List site, random anime pictures I've ...

One area of Japan gaijin are often fascinated with is the way kanji names work. While foreign names are generally ...

I was recently asked by one of my Twitter users if, after living in Japan for nearly two decades, I ...

Like many other English speaking gaijin, I came to Japan as a teacher of ESL, imparting my native language to ...

I recently wrote about things that gaijin focus on when they visit Japan, like wacky vending machines or maid cafes ...

I like to pick up on random bits of Japanese language and see what they can teach us, and one ...

I've been feeling a bit under the weather over the past few days, apparently having caught my daughter's cold. After ...

Last week I went into Tokyo on a buying trip to look for extra-cool products for the coming Christmas season, ...

One of the themes I write about often is the Japanese idea of joshiki, translatable as the knowledge that every ...

Every gaijin living in Japan has a personal relationship with Kyoto, the beautiful city that served as Japan's capital for ...

Japan is unique among industrialized nations in that the concept of tipping never caught on, and is in fact about ...

There are certain skills the Japanese people possess, which we poor gaijin usually lack. Like the ability to sit for ...

Amazingly, I am actually headed back to Japan after three months spent in San Diego doing various important family and ...

One of the first great mysteries foreigners encounter in Japan are toilets with a handles that turn in two different ...

If you were to plan a picnic, you might pack a basket containing things like sandwiches, potato salad or maybe ...

One of my Twitter followers asked me if I had any recommendations for his upcoming trip to Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost ...

Because I live in a smaller rural city in Japan, there are fewer foreigners around me, and it's not uncommon ...

Normally when I come to the U.S. the last thing I want to do is eat Japanese food, since there ...

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

If you read blogs about Japan at all, one question that gets asked a lot is, "Why is Japan so ...