Victory Manual

(Image showing a Korean national showing his…erm…disregard for China)
Inspiration from an article posted at Japan Probe

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 [...]

Here’s a rather ironic example sentence that I came across in the Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar:
私は日本語が話せるどころか、一度も勉強したことがありません。
Translation:
I am far from being able to speak Japanese; I haven’t studied it at all.
That’s a pretty complicated sentence for an absolute beginner with no experience studying the language to be saying in Japanese. It reminded me of [...]

Let’s look at a few phrases that are useful when you want to get pissed in Japanese. (Here, I mean the American-English ‘pissed’ as in ‘angry’, not the British-English ‘drunk’, although it would be an interesting thing to see someone actually getting drunk on Japanese.)
よくそんなばかなことをしたもんだ！
How could you be such an idiot!
When your friend, in [...]

In Japanese, いる expresses that an animate object exists. This does not include trees and shrubbery, as they do not move of their own volition (except treants).
ある expresses the existence of an inanimate object. Things like boxes, cars, and books ある.
But what about the AI robots of the future?

One of my pet peeves is when options to change languages in programs are only listed in the language that the program is currently set to. So, for example, if you were currently in Japanese mode and attempting to change it to English, here’s the menu you are presented with:
日本語
中国語
韓国語
英語
イタリア語
フランス語
If you don’t understand Japanese, [...]

If there’s anything significant about the 502nd one, it’s that it’s only 4 years after the 501st, which in turn was 4 years after the 500th. You may remember the 500th leap year as significant, because it’s the year we evaded doomsday brought on by computers that couldn’t perform the same function that my [...]

I’m a fan of creativity, even in advertisements. I won’t necessarily buy a product because of a well thought out commercial, but I appreciate their efforts. One thing I can’t stand, though, is contradiction in advertising, whether intentional or mistaken.
I absolutely couldn’t stand* the Sprite campaign, “Image is nothing, thirst is everything.” [...]

Among the non-Asian foreign community living in an East Asian country, there are heaps of remonstrations touching on discrimination. Whether it’s over the perceived notion that the media focuses its fire on foreign criminal activity, or the claim that “4 out of 5 landlords will not rent to a foreigner,” there is an abundance [...]

This news out of Yomiuri.
民家郵便受けに百万円の札束４つ、持ち主を捜査…名古屋
　２７日午前９時ごろ、名古屋市緑区の無職男性（８７）方で、郵便受けに現金４００万円が入った封筒があるのを男性の妻（８０）が見つけ、愛知県警緑署に届けた。
　同署の調べによると、封筒の中には１００万円の札束が４つ入っていたという。封筒は金融機関のもので、すべて新札だった。
　同日午前７時ごろ、妻が郵便受けを確認した際に封筒はなかったという。男性は「身に覚えがない」と話している。同署が現金を拾得物として保管し、持ち主を捜している。
Substitute hiragana,
みんかゆうびんうけに百万円のさつたば４つ、もちぬしをそうさ…名古屋
　２７日午前９時ごろ、名古屋市緑区のむしょく男性（８７）方で、郵便受けに現金４００万円が入った封筒があるのを男性の妻（８０）が見つけ、愛知県警緑署に届けた。
　どうしょの調べによると、封筒の中には１００万円の札束が４つ入っていたという。封筒はきんゆうきかんのもので、すべて新札だった。
　同日午前７時ごろ、妻が郵便受けを確認した際に封筒はなかったという。男性は「身に覚えがない」と話している。同署が現金をしゅうとくぶつとしてほかんし、持ち主を捜している。
English,
Mysterious 4 million yen found in residential mailbox, Nagoya, Japan
At around 9 a.m. on December 27, an 80 year old woman in Aichi-ken, Japan, who lives with her 87 year-old retired husband, found four million yen ($40,000 USD) that had been left in her mailbox. The cash was taken [...]