Tag: gaijin

Recently I talked about "fake dialects" of Japanese that are often heard in anime, which can add much to the ...

Today is the start of the Sapporo Snow Festival, the famous snow-sculpting event in which a dozen or so teams ...

There are certain jobs in Japan that are naturally better filled by foreigners, such as employees in certain ethnic restaurants, ...

Words are complex things, and one of the challenges a person learning a language like Japanese faces is parsing everything ...

Going back to the U.S. is always a treat: I get to load up on foods that I can't get ...

Besides making the freeways here actually "free" -- a policy that's received surprisingly little support once people realized the horrific ...

The other day I was shopping in a supermarket when I suddenly came face to face with two girls around ...

McDonald's Japan has been marketing itself in unique ways recently, such as using a parody of a gaijin called Mr. ...

There are many skills a foreigner needs if he wants to live in Japan, like how to say biiru o ...

One interesting difference between Japan and the West is the use of hanko, or name stamps, when indicating approval on ...

Living in a place as homogeneous as Japan brings out some interesting psychoses in people, and one could fill a ...

Japan's entertainment world is a very unique place, and it's interesting to observe it with my gaijin's eyes. Any given ...

The year 2010 marks the 1300th anniversary of the founding of Nara, the former capital of Japan and one of ...

Christmas is a happy time in Japan, when couples can exchange gifts or maybe plan a special evening together, and ...

The other day I sat my family in front of the TV to watch Up, the fantastic film by Disney/Pixar, ...

Life in Japan is quite different from back home in the States, and there were many things I needed to ...

All things considered, it's nice to be able to speak Japanese. You can talk to people in Japan who you ...

Part of Peter's Unified Theory of Japan is that the Japanese are (usually) guided by a mysterious "universal common sense" ...

Christmas is upon us, and for a gaijin living in Japan that means one thing: being asked to dress up ...

Coming to live in Japan means getting used to new things, like navigating streets with large uncovered ditches beside them ...

I caught a TV show the other day that dealt with the issue of Japan's falling population, focusing not on ...

Over the weekend I made the 65 km journey to the nearest Costco, the membership warehouse chain from the U.S., ...

The other day I met an American friend for drinks. Because his wife is from China, their kids grow up ...

One of the more interesting aspects of living in Japan is seeing famous faces from back home starring in local ...