This is a site about traveling in Japan, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take it light sometimes too… and parody can be a great way to look at something. This video was made by the comedy group Rahmens. They do a lot of skits that leave you thinking about Japanese culture, and leave you…
This is easily the best April Fool I’ve seen this year… I like it because it takes people’s misconceptions about Japan and smacks them over the head with them like a big Hokkaido salmon. Digital World Tokyo (which seems like a great website that I’ve only just discovered), wrote this article on April 1st….
OK, I know the title of this post is a little wacky, but have you ever lived here? If you live here or do business here you might be looking at that title and nodding your head slowly with a sad-but-true look on your face. Check out this interview with Sean McAllister, the director of…
I’ll embed the video here. The suicide problem is way too big here and growing. The only issue I’d take with the narration is the idea that suicide is still seen as an “honorable” way out to many people. I think the “honor” of suicide is the furthest thing from the minds of people who…
I’ve commented on this phenomenon before. I sit here in Japan reading and watching the news. We’ve got the full gambit of news. Top stories include the brutal murder of a professor on a college campus, Diet members sneaking cameras into closed-door meetings, internet death threats against a champion Sumo wrestler, a sex scandal involving…
Nonprofit organization Sanyuka has been giving food to the homeless in Tokyo on a weekly basis for over ten years has been told to cease charity activities along the riverbed of the Sumida River. They have been giving out free meals to hundreds of homeless people, but have recently been asked to stop because of…
I’ve been in Japan close to 15 years now, so when I read a recent article in The Telegraph about JR (Japan Railways) starting a campaign to improve people’s manners on trains, the following paragraph: Five years ago, it would have been unthinkable for passengers on Japan’s crowded trains to witness a female office worker…
A recent internet poll by the Goo search engine (link in Japanese) has rated the top 10 things that Japanese men feel show their status. Car Job Educational Background Watch Qualifications and Licenses Suit Where they shop or eat Where they live Beautiful wife or girlfriend Shoes Number five is probably unique to Japanese because…
This is a list of things people in Japan claim they can’t stop doing even if people tell them to. If you’ve been around people eating here in Japan, I’m sure you’ve seen them all! If you haven’t been to Japan, I hope this provides food for thought or questions or comments about the culture…
According to an article in the Japan Times, one out of every thirty babies born in Japan had a non-Japanese parent. 19,000 babies had non-Japanese fathers, the majority being North and South Korean, followed by Chinese and Brazilian. 26,000 had non-Japanese mothers who were from China, the Philippines, and the Koreas respectively. 9,000 children were…
If you watch the video, you’ll here some wacky stuff. Now maybe I don’t go to enough “hi tech” buildings to have used the “smart toilet” but this is the kind of over-generalized news about Japan that drives me crazy. Here’s the video about the crazy robo-toilets that are “commonplace” in Japan these days. If…
The link to the article is right here. It’s entirely in Japanese, but there are some graphs you may be able to understand with a little Japanese ability. To put it straight, the article is not a very good piece of scholarship, the first graph the article provides (on the first page of the link…