Recently I happened to stop by Kinokuniya, one of the better Japanese bookstores in San Jose. I wanted to buy a few things there to read, but since I had done practically no research before arriving I ended up picking up the first issue of Hiroya Oku’s “Dog House” base only on the cover art and some text which said something about robots… Read More »
A friend of mine told me he had heard of someone who was making an attempt to read one novel from each country in the world. This sounded like a pretty fun project, but of course my first instinct was to ask “so which novel was picked for Japan?” The answer to this question was… Read More »
I first heard about this movie a few months ago (it debuted last November in theaters) as a CG-animated film which was heavily influenced by Japanese culture. Being a fan of both CG and Japanese culture, I had to see it, although I waited until it came out on Blue Ray last month. The story… Read More »
Though I am a big advocate of learning a foreign language using all possible resources, music is one part of Japanese culture I haven’t emphasized as much as manga, novels, or TV dramas. Although I’ve enjoyed songs from various Japanese genres, and there are few artists I’ve been into (Quruli, Utada Hikaru, Yui, etc.), recently… Read More »
We received “99 Tears” as a gift and since it was a relatively thin paperback book I decided to try it out. It’s a set of 12 short stories, each written by a different Japanese author. The settings and characters are all different, but they all share an emphasis on interpersonal relations, especially those with family.… Read More »
It’s no exaggeration to say I’m a huge fan of Japanese Ramen soup, so much that I’ve been considering writing an entire post on it. But this time I’ve decided to write a review of a ramen shop I went to recently in Hollywood, Florida, that was quite delicious. The store is called ‘GoBistro’, and to be… Read More »
Me and my wife decided to buy this movie’s DVD from Amazon since it had quite good reviews and we were glad we did. This film is partially based on real events, where several girls from a small mining town, Iwaki (Fukushima prefecture) began learning hula dancing after discovering a spa resort (Joban Hawaiian Center) is… Read More »
In the age of the internet, anyone studying a foreign language can access nearly limitless content in the language of their choice if they search hard enough (though I have read that know some languages are more represented than others online). Having said that, I feel there is something special about using magazines for foreign language study.… Read More »
(I’ve made a single question survey regarding Japanese ability – if you are interested please check it out here. Thanks!) As things have been the last few years, I haven’t spent much time watching Japanese dramas, and finding one that is good enough to keep my attention past the first episode is even rarer. “素敵な選Taxi”… Read More »
“Humorous short story collection” by Endo Shusaku is one of the books I picked up at an Japanese grocery store in Orlando that just happened to have a rack of used books. At the time I thought it was from a different writer, but after discovering my mistake I decided to try reading it anyway.… Read More »