Tag: Japan

Body language is a big part of communication, and one aspect of interacting with the Japanese is picking up on ...

Japanese television is always interesting, and never fails to give me neta, a word which refers to the fish part ...

The Korean invasion of Japan is continuing, and every time I flip channels it seems I come across another Korean ...

One fun aspect of living in Japan is seeing how many television commercials you can watch before coming across one ...

Coming to a very seasonal country like Japan from San Diego, a city whose two seasons are "nice" and "slightly ...

One of the more welcome aspects of the Japanese people is their tendency to be humble, a trait you observe ...

One of my Twitter followers asked me, "How long did it take for bowing to become automatic when you learned ...

No matter how many years I spend in Japan, every new day brings with it the potential for new linguistic ...

The Japanese are fans of "ranking" TV shows that rank famous products for you, and it's not hard to find ...

The end is near for Naoto Kan, 94th Prime Minister of Japan. I've been a fan of Mr. Kan's for ...

One thing you don't generally think of a lot is addresses and how they work, or how easy it is ...

One thing you get used to about Japanese people is, they don't think too deeply about their own language, and ...

Hello again, this time from...the Pacific Northwest. I've driven with two friends up to Snoqualmie, Washington, to attend the Twin ...

Although the Japanese generally are very polite and considerate, there are times when foreigners like me might consider what they ...

Living in a foreign country for many years can change anyone, and I'm certainly a different person than before I ...

All countries have what the Japanese call a komumin-sei, a sort of "national personality" that I write about every so ...

The Fourth of July is a great summer "festival" in the U.S., a day to celebrate America's birthday, eat hot ...

The Summer of 2011 has begun in ernest, and it's definitely going to be a dicey one for Japan. The ...

Fire is a constant problem in Japan, a country taken with building houses of wood and paper then heating them ...

Japan is well known as one of the most aged societies on the planet, with an amazing 22% of the ...

One observation I've made about the Japanese people is that they often don't pay close attention to their own language, ...

Sometimes it's fun to deconstruct the bizarre "physics" of anime, which violate the laws of the universe we live in ...

In Japanese there are some amusing phonetic conventions that get used in advertising, which are interesting for a gaijin to ...

My home town of San Diego has just two seasons: sunny and slightly less sunny. In contrast, Japan has very ...