Minimalism - Online Income - ESL - Japan
My general observations from living in Japan.
It wasn’t long ago that elevators in Japan were hit by all manner of scandals, whether it was substandard steel, entrapment or even crushing, it was the “cool” thing in the news at the time. Everything has its turn on Japanese news. They even play scary music during the news reports to heighten the danger. The topic usually changes each month when it loses its entertainment value, but we’ve had foreign crime, food […]
One book I enjoyed reading before I came to Japan was Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. It was published in 1904 and is a collection of weird and ghostly tales from Japan. Since it’s Halloween, I’ve picked a story called Ubazakura, which couldn’t be more appropriate for a blog about Japan and babies. Ubazakura Three hundred years ago, in the village called Asamimura, in the district called Onsengori, in the province of Iyo, there lived […]
I studied my backside off when I first came to Japan. I passed level 4 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test in my first year, level 3 the next, and then level 2 the year after that. Unfortunately, the jump from level 2 to level 1 is so great that I didn’t even try going for it. Instead, I let seven more years pass without once picking up a kanji […]
I don’t watch a lot of Japanese TV, but every night when I get home from work, I sit down to eat dinner and watch whatever Japanese drama is on. This is a pattern I’ve followed for three years now, so I’m getting better at recognizing some of the actors and actresses that appear, reappear, and then appear again. My favorite actor is Smap’s Kusanagi Tsuyoshi, but for this post I […]
Walking around the shops the other day, I saw that Christmas goods are already for sale - in mid-October, in a country that doesn’t even celebrate Christmas (they celebrate Kentucky Fried Chicken instead). It’s not really a surprise to see the biggest commercial festival of the year starting well before the event itself, but I am surprised to see all the Christmas cards… With a tradition of New Year’s post cards (nengajou), sending greetings cards like we do back home isn’t common practice […]
I don’t think Halloween is anywhere near to reaching its full potential in Japan, but I have definitely seen the shopping centers step up their bid to impose this spooky holiday on the masses. The orange on black colour combo has taken over my local shopping center, and Tokyo Times report the same happening in the capital. I wonder how long it will be before Halloween reaches the horribly commercial levels of Japanese Christmas? […]
It’s been nearly a year since we moved into our first house. Most house hunters will have saved enough to put down a hefty deposit on a new house in Japan, but in our case, we had to find a mortgage to cover the whole cost of the house. Mortgages in Japan usually run for 35 years, which is actually longer than the lifespan of a Japanese house. Typically, after 15 years you’ll need […]
I must have done something worthy of attention because Mike from BlogsOnJapan.com pulled me aside for an interview. Mike is putting together a collection of interviews with bloggers in Japan, and LongCountdown.com made the list. Find out what my favorite place in Japan is, who my favorite celebrity is, and what I think of Japanese food by reading the Interview with Long Countdown. On top of that, I was surprised to find myself the subject of […]