Learn Japanese from Car Names. The hidden needle and thread in the Toyota logo is a reference to their origins as a maker of cloth looming machines.
Read more →The Yakuza, simply put, is the Japanese mafia. It is Japan’s infamous organized crime syndicate. Like their Italian counterparts, they have been elevated to legendary pop-culture status through countless movies,…
Read more →The Meat Lovers Guide To Japan. Traveling to Japan if you are not a big fan of fish
Read more →Japanese cheerleaders asking you to take your garbage with you. Yurtec Stadium Sendai, Home of the Vegalta Sendai J-League professional soccer team. I will begin this post about Japanese…
Read more →The Meat Lovers Guide To Japan. You want to go to Japan, perhaps for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. But you have one major worry; You don’t like fish. You are a meat eater and you’ve been one your whole life. And if you don’t like fish, I’ll assume that eating…
There are many parallels and similarities between these 2 buildings… From a personal point of view, the most obvious one is me. Chicago and Nagoya are my hometowns. For the longest time, they were the only two cites I have ever lived in. When I started living in Nagoya, it…
This is an amazing 360 photo-panorama done by Jeffrey Martin for 360gigapixels.com. It shows everything around the Ropponggi Hills area except the Mori Building that the photo was taken from. He used a Canon 7D digital SLR and and a huge 400mm telephoto lens. The combo gives amazingly sharp images…
Another minor setback in my attempt to speak Japanese led me to indirectly acquire the largest friggin’ bug I have ever seen in my life. The story goes a little something like this; I’m at a temple in Kariya Japan and I meet a guy who’s collecting bugs with his…
Wright designed precious few hotels. This was going to be a top 10 list, but to the chagrin of every student of architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright did not make 10 hotels. With over 500 projects to his credit, Wright designed precious few hotels. All but 2 have been completely demolished. So without…
You can if you are the Japanese Women’s Olympic Hockey Team. It is a little strange seeing “cute” and “hockey” in the same sentence but hockey blogs and news outlets everywhere seem to be putting the two words together for the first time to describe the Sochi Olympic’s number one under-dog…
KitKat now has their own flagship store in Tokyo. The KitKat “Chocolatory” as it is called, is the first and only store of its kind. It is located in the Seibu department store in Ikebukuro. Ikebukuru may not be as recognizable or as well known to people outside of Japan, but it is host…
I have a continuing series where I meet famous Japanese people and attempt to talk with them in Japanese. This weeks disastrous episode is Kazunori Yamauchi (山内 一典), creator of the legendary Gran Turismo series on the Playstation, and CEO of Polyphony Digital. I wanted to say, “Shashin wa daijoubu…
The American Baseball Player. Japan loves baseball. The longer you live there the more you realize how crazy they are for the sport. Team logos are seen everywhere and the players endorse…
The Nanatsuboshi (which means “seven stars” in Japanese) is a new high end extravagant luxury train built by the Kyushu Railway Co. Aside from it’s visual similarities to the Mammoth…
Tokyo getting awarded the 2020 Summer Olympic Games is great news for Japan. A country that has taken a beating in the last few years in front of the entire…
The Japanese love curry and they use it to flavor everything. Similar to American’s and their nacho cheese. Here they are flavoring the classic Japanese cultural icon: Cup Noodles with…
おめでとうございます。 Congratulations to Takuma Sato. The first Japanese driver to win an IndyCar race. Here are some more photos of the Race. Comments commentsPowered…
One Saturday morning in Nagoya Japan, I walked down to my local grocery store. It sits under the tracks at the small but cozy Sako Station. It is the first…
Okinawa Japan was recently named one of the Top 10 places to visit in 2013 by Coastal Living Magazine. Claiming that Okinawa “Has what it takes to be the next…
Natto, along with uni, and konnyaku, make up the top three Japanese foods that scare the bejesus out of people. None of these foods actually tastes bad. I think they…
This is an ongoing series where I explain concepts of the Japanese language through words that you already know; Japanese car names. (Car Names Main Page) Lets use Honda…
I will begin this post about Japanese garbage, trash, and litter with a soccer story. It was the 1998 World Cup in France. The Japanese national soccer team had qualified…
This is a sign outside of the small town of Gobo in Wakayama Japan. It makes for a great Kanji quiz, as all destinations are 5 characters long. But it…
They say that once you are able to talk to a barber and a cab driver in a foreign country, using a foreign language, you are now considered fluent. Of…
The first barber I ever went to was around the corner from my old apartment near Nagoya Station. It is a tightly packed neighborhood behind the Toyota Museum. There is…
This is an ongoing series where I explain concepts of the Japanese language through words that you already know; Japanese car names. Read Part-1 Read Part-2 The mid 1980’s started…
This is an ongoing series where I explain concepts of the Japanese language through words that you already know; Japanese car names. Read Part-1 here. For the first time ever on…
Toyota and Katakana (part 1) This is an ongoing series where I explain concepts of the Japanese language through words that you already know; Japanese car names. . Let’s use…
