Category: Other
Tokyo Vice Book Review
Tokyo Vice is a courageous book written by a very brave man*. It’s the autobiography of Jake...
Read MoreHow Japan Selects Astronauts
I’ve been reading an interesting book called Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. It’s about the quirky side of space exploration – things like what’s involved in getting an American...
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Long-Term Accommodation in Japan
You’ve probably heard a lot of horror stories about Japanese apartments: cockroach infested...
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Ten Quirky Objects
Here are 10 objects that pretty much any Japanese person would recognize, but which may not be so...
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Edo-Period Recycling
I stumbled across this interesting article a while ago about how there was pretty much no garbage...
Read More21st Century Yakuza
The image of the punch-permed yakuza, with his missing pinky finger and Yamaguchi-gumi pin on his lapel is a stereotype that is quickly becoming as outdated as the geisha and samurai. The 1990’s were a time of enormous...
Read MoreUseless People in Japan
Japan is filled with workers who do almost nothing. You probably haven’t needed a crossing guard to help you across the street since you were five years old, but you can find crossing guards on quiet streets far away from...
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Japanese People’s Most-Hated English Words
This is from a 2-channel discussion I chanced upon. The thread’s title was “English...
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Uniquely Japanese Job Interview Questions
On the surface, Japanese job interviews are a lot like Western ones, and the interviewers ask you...
Read MoreThe Surprising History of the Japanese Cold Mask
I was watching a documentary called World War II in Color and HD when I noticed that some pre-WWII footage of Japanese people getting off a train showed a man and woman wearing face masks. I thought masks were quite a modern...
Read MoreEarthquake Sickness
Sometimes when I’m sitting at my desk, I suddenly feel the ground shaking, but when I look around, everyone else is just sitting there calmly. I always feel really stupid, and I was starting to wonder if there was...
Read MoreThe Hardest-working Homeless in the World
Japan must have the hardest-working homeless people in the world. I think I’ve seen about two panhandlers in the 17 years I’ve lived here. I did some reading about them on this government survey and this blog. It...
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