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We all love the land of Hello Kitty, but some of us take it too far. Some of the white guys teaching English in Japan want to really become Japanese. Their efforts to morph their race go unacknowledged by local authorities and up goes the old cry: “Racism!” It’s true, no matter how fluent Billy [...]

To get a better perspective on modern marriage and family, it’s instructive to look at them in other times and cultures. In the Heian period (roughly 800-1200 CE) in Japan, the noble class practiced a very interesting system of courtship and marriage. This is the system portrayed in “The Tale of Genji” by Murasaki Shikibu, [...]

So I programmed a page to randomly generate names of Japanese restaurants. It’s pretty cool, check it out here: Japanese Restaurant Name Generator. Not only does it come up with randomized names, but you can even vote on them So far it’s been a fun quick little project to give me more practice incorporating 3rd [...]

Japanese grammar is famous for being so out-of-order compared to English. Or is it the other way around? Maybe English is the out-of-order grammar! Just for fun, let’s imagine WWII turned out drastically different, computers were invented in Japan, and they got to make up all the syntax. What would a typical programming language’s syntax [...]

The cool thing about comparing languages which are as distantly related as English and Japanese, is when you dig deep enough, you’ll uncover little linguistic quirks which blow your mind. Here are a few examples. 1. Raccoons are Bears Japanese people consider raccoons to be small bears, in the same way English speakers consider lions [...]

This is a very long-delayed continuation of the Goldmine of Engrish I published previously. I wasn’t planning on posting an Engrish sequel, but the original was so popular, people are practically demanding an encore, so here we go These are some of the most horrifically badly translated subtitles ever put forth by any translation agency. [...]

A Buddhist Koan is a short tale used to nudge people closer toward Zen enlightenment. Since I really appreciate and love these witty little verses, I decided I’d share some of my favorites here. At first, I thought I’d garnish them with some detailed commentary and analysis. Then I realized, the verses are like works [...]

Fujikyo High was a pretty average, ordinary Japanese high school. Sure, its student body included seven of the world’s most elite martial artists, two sensei who were space aliens (uchuujin) in disguise, five giant mecha pilots, the world’s two greatest (and rival) Mahjong players, three time travelers, a clan of vampires, six magical transforming schoolgirls, [...]

Sunday, April 26. Today I mostly just lounged around and didn’t do much but read Tintin graphic novels. Earlier my keyboard seemed to short out or something after girlfriend wiped it with some hand-wiping towelette. The keys became very irresponsive, so I had to hit a key repeatedly to make it register. I was just [...]

Friday, April 24. 9:38 PM. Opened japtemp. 5 cards scheduled, 0 failed/unmemorized. Passed four of them, failed one. 9:39PM. Opened kanjiaid. 6 scheduled, 2 failed. I passed 5 of the 6 scheduled, and 1 of the 2 failed, leaving the deck at 0 scheduled and 2 failed. 9:40 PM. Opened sam.mem. Since I’m short on [...]