Category Archives: culture

Japan Trip 2018 (Tokyo/Hokkaido): Part 11 – Miraikan science museum and Odaiba

This article is part of the series about my July 2018 trip to Japan. Please see the table of contents page for other articles in this series as they are posted. In a previous article about robots I mentioned the Miraikan museum, also known as “The National Museum of Emerging Science & Innovation.” In this… Read More »

Japan Trip 2018 (Tokyo/Hokkaido): Part 10 – Robots in Japan

This article is part of the series about my July 2018 trip to Japan. Please see the table of contents page for other articles in this series as they are posted. I’ve been interested in robots since my college years (I took a class where we built and programmed robots), and I’m very lucky that… Read More »

Japan Trip 2018 (Tokyo/Hokkaido): Part 9 – Hokkaido: Sapporo and Hakodate (with pictures)

This article is part of the series on my July 2018 trip to Japan. Please see the table of contents page for other articles in this series as they are posted. None of us had been to northeast Japan before, so we decided to spend a good portion of this trip in the cities of… Read More »

Japan Trip 2018 (Tokyo/Hokkaido): Part 8 – Visiting Square Enix Cafe in Akihabara

This article is part of the series on my July 2018 trip to Japan. Please see the table of contents page for other articles in this series as they are posted. While walking through Akihabara we stumbled on the “Square Enix Cafe”, a restaurant that I had never heard of before; but being a Final… Read More »

Gotta catch ’em all (in Japanese): Learning Pokemon cards in a foreign language

In my college days, I was really into the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering, although in the last decade or two I don’t think I’ve played a single game. One of the fun things about having children is the possibility of exposing your hobbies and interests to them, and if you are lucky they… Read More »

Japan Trip 2018 (Tokyo/Hokkaido): Part 7 – Japanese Elementary School Experience

This article is part of the series on my July 2018 trip to Japan. Please see the table of contents page for other articles in this series as they are posted. I was very lucky to be able to have the opportunity to observe first grade elementary class for an entire day in a school… Read More »

Japanese literature review: “Utopia” (ユートピア) by Kanae Minato (湊かなえ)

On a recent trip to Japan (which I am in the process of reporting on here), I browsed through many bookstores. Because my reading speed in Japanese still hasn’t quite caught up to my English reading speed, rather than actually read a few pages of a book I generally focus on searching for covers and… Read More »

Japan Trip 2018 (Tokyo/Hokkaido): Part 6 – The Maid Cafe Experience

This article is part of the series on my July 2018 trip to Japan. Please see the table of contents page for other articles in this series as they are posted. I think many people have heard about Japan’s “maid cafes” (メイドカフェ or メイド喫茶)that allow viewing and interacting with cute girls in maid uniforms; but… Read More »

Japan Trip 2018 (Tokyo/Hokkaido): Part 5 – Practicing Japanese Skills in Japan

This article is part of the series on my July 2018 trip to Japan. Please see the table of contents page for other articles in this series as they are posted. While I have been interested in Japan’s culture as far back as I can remember, as you can probably tell from this blog it… Read More »

Japan Trip 2018 (Tokyo/Hokkaido): Part 4 – Japanese Kindness

This article is part of the series on my July 2018 trip to Japan. Please see the table of contents page for other articles in this series as they are posted. In Japanese, the word kokuminsei (国民性) roughly translates to “the national character” and represents certain proclivities or characteristics of a certain race of people.… Read More »