Japanese cheat sheet (old)
Alright, I so started this blog about a month ago. Posts are starting to build up and I’m starting to feel at home here lately. I decided it was time to start dishing out some real content, otherwise I’m just another ranting Japanophile. So for the last week or so I’ve been hard at work on a top secret project, and now it’s done!
I present to the world the Nihonshock Japanese cheat sheet!
Pizza Flavored Instant Yaki-soba
Japanese people are very good at coming up with flavors and combinations that no one else would dare to attempt. On this point, Japanese pizza is another post in and of itself… but today I just want to show everyone this interesting new product that caught my eye at my local convenience store yesterday.
Silver Week in Japan
Many of you may have heard of Golden Week, a string of Japanese holidays in early May that is a major time for Japanese people to go on vacation. But I doubt as many have heard of Silver Week! But there’s a good reason you may not have heard of it though: this year is the first Silver Week ever…
Jubeat: the most awesome game ever.
It was about one year ago that I first discovered this beautiful machine at a local ゲーセン (“game center” or arcade), and I fell in love at first sight. Those big, beautiful buttons, the soothing cyber-techno atmosphere… I felt like I was dancing in the future, with my hands. This was it. This was the music game to rule all music games, it was perfect.
Katakana Mysteries: 6 loan words Japan got wrong
Two minutes with a fashion magazine or computer manual is all you need to understand that loan words are all the rage in Japan. At book stores, you can find katakana dictionaries for every need, from technically oriented things automotive engineering or graphic design, to more simple katakana dictionaries for old grandmothers and grandfathers who simply want to…
Infectious Gastroenteritis!?
one of my old Japanglish pictures from a Tokyo hotel a year or so ago…
20 Similar-Looking Kanji
For this post I’ve collected 10 pairs of kanji that to untrained eyes might look almost or exactly the same. My intent is not to discourage learners by highlighting the difficult points of kanji (though there are certainly difficulties…), but rather to spark an interest in kanji…
Japanese have small stuff
Japanese are well known around the world as masters of miniature. And for a small island country of relatively short statured people, limited space and an obsession with things that are 可愛い (kawaii = cute) this should come as little surprise…
Japanese Proverbs: August 2009
Every day I post a new Japanese proverb on Twitter, so please follow me if you’re interested. At the end of every month I will recap the proverbs in a blog post…
Seiken Koutai (Power Change)
政権交代 (せいけんこうたい) , or “power change” was the battle cry of the Democratic party here in Japan for the last month or so as everything built up to today’s Lower House election…

















