We hope you had a wonderful Christmas holiday, wherever you are in the world. We had a great day, complete ...
I've made the long hop from Japan to New York, and I'm now enjoying the 19 degree (with wind chill) ...
One question I've been asked by my ESL students in Japan is, just where is "standard" American English located geographically? ...
Every language is constantly evolving, and while the English major in me isn't always happy about the LOLification of my ...
I watch more than a little late-night Japanese TV, and I enjoy its light- hearted goofiness. The other night I ...
I knew it would happen: Heroes is starting to get popular in Japan. This morning I turned on the TV ...
I've written before about the psychology of ex-pats living in Japan, such as the the Three Stages of Eye Aversion ...
When I was in the U.S. I played with Apple's new iPhone in an Apple Store and immediately knew I ...
When I was in the U.S. I played with Apple's new iPhone in an Apple Store and immediately knew I ...
Well, one weekend and a staggering 150,000 people later, the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con is past. It was a wild ...
I talked last time about some of the mechanisms that are in place to keep Japan's group-oriented society running smoothly, ...
The Star Wars Celebration IV convention continues, and we're having lots of fun. Highlights have included Carrie Fisher coming by ...
The Star Wars Celebration IV convention is in full swing, and here in Los Angeles tens of thousands of fans ...
What a difference an elongated vowel can make. Japanese is quite different from English, having had a totally unique developmental ...
Japan is a country that's very focused on education, and I've always observed that parents seem to put more energy ...
Chinese New Year is going on right now, and throughout Asia people are celebrating the cultural holiday. Although Japan switched ...
No consideration of Japan is complete without the often-quoted-by-gaijin- who-are-experts-on-Japan phrase deru kui wa utareru (DE-ru KOO-ee wa oo-TAH-reh-ru), which ...
"What is your hobby?" This is one of the first phrases of English conversation that Japanese students learn, along with ...
I've written before about how the meinichi (命日), the anniversary of a person's death, is very important in a Buddhist ...
It was Thomas Paine -- a possible ancestor of mine, although I somehow doubt it -- who uttered the words, ...
Sunday was my father's meinichi, the anniversary of the day he died nine years ago (although Japanese are always puzzled ...
Imagine if a food you ate every day were suddenly unavailable, say, hamburgers, just to pick an example. With no ...
A recent commercial featured a voice saying, nihon-jin wa urusai! which means that Japanese are loud and obnoxious and fussy. ...
Yesterday was time for my annual top-to-bottom physical, called Ningen Dock, a name that implies a human (ningen) "drydock" where ...
