Victory Manual

Sakai Junko’s essay 電車の中で若者に注意 got me to thinking about “generation gaps” as “foreign culture”.
In the essay, Ms. Sakai rants about a few episodes where young people should have been admonished for their inconsiderate behavior. In one example, she highlights two young men riding a bullet train watching TV on a cell phone sans headphones. [...]

As a foreigner in Japan who currently teaches English, it’s impossible to avoid having an opinion on a policy of mandatory second-language education. Deas from rockinginhakata.com commented on bilingualism (particularly of English and Spanish in the States), but I want to take one step back, towards second-language education in a general scope.
In terms of [...]

The audacity of hope a foreigner trying to apply for a credit card in Japan, whose hope is ultimately shattered by a rejection letter!
I want to buy a house in Japan; maybe not tomorrow, but someday. In order to buy a house I need credit. It can’t be any credit, though. No [...]

Curiosity lead me to hunt down some numbers for my personal interest in mining statistics.
Considering a liberal estimate of 14 million Jews world-wide, and a world population of 6,707,035,007 as of July 1st, 2008, that means the world is only .2% Jewish. Out of the 574 Nobel Prize Laureates, 160 are Jews, meaning that [...]

Let me tell you a little bit about what made Kublai Kahn such an impressive leader, even by our modern standards.
Kublai Kahn united China, in spite of being a foreigner, and despite that his own country was in civil unrest at the time. Furthermore, he was tolerant of the Chinese culture and did not [...]

When someone says “comic book” in English, I’m guessing most people, like me, think of Superman, Spiderman, Batman, X-Men, or some other super-hero (powerful-sounding-word+man) based storyline. The Japanese version of comics (manga) are completely different, though.
I found a compact series called 「マンガ、日本の歴史がわかる本」 (Which is hard to translate as it comes out as something like [...]

I was about to hop in the shower about 30 minutes ago when the ground began to quake again. Once again, the telltale alarm of the wine glasses clinking together started up.
It was a pretty big shake, so I turned on the news as soon as it stopped (I had my daughter in my [...]

Who’s making news in Japan?
Rockinginhakata.com’s Deas hit a little bit on the issue of balanced coverage in Japanese media of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election a couple of weeks ago, and it sparked my curiosity.
I ran each name of the three major candidates through Japanese news sites to see how many hits they came out [...]

The first tremors began to hit around 12:30 am, just as I was about to go to sleep last night. The clinking sound of wine glasses was the first sign, then the rolling sensation. The first round lasted about 20 seconds.
Five minutes later came some more shaking. Not as big as the [...]

The solution to Japanese farmers’ bind of not selling any rice because of its high cost is simply to not grow any rice at all! With protectionist policies, they could make a fortune out of growing nothing!
“His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government [...]