Tag: Japan

In a recent update I mentioned that the way to express the idea of "brown-nosing" someone was goma o suru, ...

This Sunday is my 12th anniversary as a J-blogger. J-List has been around since 1996, but I trace my beginning ...

You may know the Japanese word sumimasen, which generally corresponds to "excuse me" and is one of the more useful ...

Japan is probably the only country where eating too quietly will get comments from people around you. The correct way ...

One of the better aspects about living in Japan, from the point of view as a Yankee expat, is the ...

First of all, the J-List and JBOX.com websites were down for a portion of Saturday due to a site issue ...

Sunday was my birthday, and while turning 42 certainly has its own nerdy charm -- although I still don't know ...

Anime is a useful bridge between East and West since it allows you to pick up on some of the ...

For some reason, gaijin always seem to remember the first words of Japanese we learn. In my case it was ...

One of the challenges of getting used to my new life in Japan was the total lack of street names, ...

Japanese advertisers are a creative bunch of people, good at coming up with new and interesting ways to get consumers ...

It's funny how words move from one language group to another in this hyper-connected world we live in. Like the ...

One of my favorite foods is sushi, and when someone in our family has a birthday, we often send out ...

Well, Lost has finally ended, and I have to say thanks to the producers and cast for one wild wide. ...

Sometimes when we add new products to the J-List website, we've got a pretty good idea they might be popular ...

I recently passed by a restaurant I'd not been near for a while, and found myself doing a double take: ...

I write a lot about how Japanese names work, since they're quite different from names in Western languages. Japanese people ...

One of the joys of being a long-term gaijin in Japan is eventually building a house here. Houses in Japan ...

Before I started J-List, I had a career as a teacher of eikaiwa or English conversation. In Japan there's a ...

After studying Japanese for four years at San Diego State University and living here for nearly twenty years, I'm about ...

Late-night TV in Japan is always fun to watch, and I like to flip through the channels to see what's ...

The Japanese government will soon be making good on its promise of distributing money to families with children, giving approximately ...

Have you noticed more Japanese people around you over the past couple of days? If so, it may be due ...

Japanese marrying partners from other countries is called kokusai kekkon, and it's viewed by many here as an alternative choice ...