These days for a variety of reasons I rarely watch anime, or even live-action shows for that matter. But I ended up with a Netflix account through a promotional deal and wanted to take a break between translation projects, so I decided to check out a few episodes of random anime series on there that… Read More »
Ironically, the Japanese form of entertainment that I had consumed the most in my early years of studying Japanese––anime––is now among those I consume the least. But still I like to watch an episode every once in a while, sometimes even an entire series. Recently I had an opportunity to get a Netflix subscription on… Read More »
While I know many of us struggle with tsundoku (積ん読)––buying mounds of books you never read––perhaps tondoku (止ん読)––starting a book or series and never finishing it––is an even graver crime. (Note: please see the last paragraph of this post regarding the word ‘tondoku‘) Sometime back I had read the first few issues of manga Inuyashiki (いぬやしき) by… Read More »
Although the hit anime film “Your Name” (君の名は) has been out for around a year and a half, I finally got around to watching it (yes, it was as great as I had heard). While there are probably hundreds (thousands?) of reviews on this movie floating around the net, I thought I might as well… Read More »
Recently I’ve been checking out a few new anime on the online streaming service Crunchyroll while I take part in my free trial there. I think I’ve written about this in a past post or two, but after watching anime for 5 or 10 years (or even longer) I started to get tired of the same… Read More »
Hal, an animated Japanese film from 2013 directed by Ryōtarō Makihara, is the second of two movies we recently purchased. The first was Patema Inverted, which I reviewed here. These movies were so totally different in almost every way. This movie begins with a terrible plane accident that results in the death of Hal (more… Read More »
I decided to buy this movie after seeing the preview for Patema Inverted on Amazon Prime. I hadn’t seen an anime movie in a little while, and it looked to have great potential. Unfortunately, this movie was a pretty big letdown. The premise of this movie is a bit hokey, if not comedical: It’s boy-meets-girl… Read More »
Being a fan of Japanese anime, I rarely watch American cartoons. This is both because I am usually turned off by their, well, cartoony and unrealistic art style, plus the fact that on average the stories are just less interesting to me. I’ll admit to a major bias here, which probably came about because I watched hundreds… Read More »
In the process of writing this blog, one thing I’ve discovered is that I enjoy the challenge of translating from Japanese to English. To that end, I’ve decided to put out a call for translation requests. I’m open to translating anything including portions of Manga, TV dramas, movies, novels, or newspapers. The only requirement is… Read More »
A few weeks ago I entered in a contest on Haiku Girl’s blog and was lucky enough to win “Japan Journeys: Famous Woodblock Prints of Cultural Sights in Japan”, by Andreas Marks (published by Tuttle Publishing who coordinated with Haiku Girl to run this contest). This book contains around 200 Japanese woodblocks of famous scenic areas… Read More »