I was trudging home the other night with a dōryō (同僚, colleague) after another in a series of sābisu zangyō (サービス残業, unpaid overtime) sessions, debating whether to skip dinner or stop off at the nearest 24-hour sūpā (スーパー, supermarket). Out of the blue, my ...
One of the great statistical mysteries that persist several years after a natural disaster is the figure that appears without fail each month in columns representing the number of people that are still missing. Almost three years after the Great East Japan Earthquake and ...
Kumassy is a cat. As yet he has no owner. No one knows where or when he was born, only that he was found slinking through the damp, cold streets of Okuma in Fukushima Prefecture on Dec. 28 before being scooped up by what ...
At the end of March, having reached the age of 70 three months ago, I’ll retire from my post as a lecturer at Okinawa Christian University — mandatory retirement. Knowing this has given me a real sense of liberation in the past year or ...
At last, PS4 in Japan Finally! The PlayStation 4 is getting its long-awaited Japanese release. The PS3 successor is Sony’s most popular game console to date and was released in the West last fall, leaving Japanese gamers to wait until February. It’s sleek, quiet ...
After the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants awards ceremony in Singapore last month, chef Yoshihiro Narisawa was in high spirits, despite the late hour and the tropical February heat. His Tokyo restaurant, the eponymous Narisawa in the Aoyama district, had been named Best Restaurant in ...
On cold winter mornings the bulbuls come squawking their full-throated calls as they swoop onto bird-feeders, their white-tipped gray breast feathers appearing frosted by the chill. There, they will eat bread crusts and seeds — or halved mikans given a chance — but in ...
Glasses that just might bounce Shupua look like regular glasses — they have a nice shiny gloss and a heavy base — but they are far from ordinary drinking vessels. The second you touch one, you’ll realize that the fragility is an illusion. Shupua ...
Today we introduce various meanings and usages of the verb 上（あ）がる (to go up) and its related expressions.
With their “Kampai!“-bellowing salarymen, bible-sized menus and endless rounds of cheap beers, izakaya have long been an integral part of Japan’s nightlife. But unfortunately for parents with small kids, there seems to be an unwritten law dictating that for all their entertaining qualities, izakaya ...
“If you use beautiful things every day, you will naturally cultivate an eye for beautiful things without giving it a second thought. In the end, you will be repelled when you encounter the ugly and the fake. If only all Japan would come to ...
