If you're reading this, the odds are extraordinarily high that you don't walk around carrying business cards. That's because they're a lost art where English is the primary language.
On the other hand, the tradition is alive and well in Japan.
Then there's the difference in the months of the year that the Japanese and Americans go watch film.
Summer, to be sure, is the period for blockbuster movies in Japan as it is in America, but the definition of "summer" differs quite a bit between the two markets. In
The United States is undoubtedly the king of the film market, but it turns out Japan is no slouch. Until being passed by India recently, Japan was the third largest film market in the world in terms of revenue.
Considering that Japan trails only the United States (of Hollywood), China (of 1.3 billion people) and
Despite my affliction with Airplane Incidents Obsession Syndrome, I enjoy traveling by air. I've flown domestically and internationally, in business and in economy, and on U.S. and foreign airlines. What I've discovered through all that flying is that U.S. airlines are unbearably, unbelievably awful.
In fact, I'd rather fly 14 hours on economy class from New
Japanese and American people are truly remarkable people, although they amaze in entirely different ways.
The Japanese excel in order and discipline.
My favorite example to illustrate this is the shugaku ryokou, which is like a field trip for an entire grade over a couple nights at some exotic location like the historical city of Kyoto or Tokyo
There are so many things that make winter the best of the four seasons, and what would make it even better is more of everything.
When I lived in the United States, winter always began on Thanksgiving week, just when the temperature outside starts to get comfortably cold in the Northeast. Thanksgiving means a lot of
For me, the fall will always mark the beginning of a new year. For nearly two decades, September is when I progressed one year in the educational ladder. Now that I'm working, fall is when I tack on another year in my experience as a working professional. I've always loved this season because it's when
I think I was in sixth grade when I first engaged in a debate. It was at my weekly Saturday Japanese school and for reasons unclear, the topic de jour was which is better: coins or bills. For reasons even more unclear, I took the side of vigorously defending the existence of coins while my
The food is great in Tokyo. By that I mean the taste, not the portions.
Compared to America--where they feed you like a horse--the portions at Japanese restaurants are ridiculously small. It's pretty much assured that whatever dishes the restaurant trots out as a full-course meal is insufficient to satisfy your hunger. That's why I
I am starting my new life in Tokyo, where new challenges await. I'm really excited, but the move still feels quite surreal. I don't think reality has quite sunk in.
Twenty-one years, 3 months and 10 days passed between my residency in Japan. That's a long time. I haven't felt nostalgic yet, but I've started to
I grew up in a quintessential, middle class New Jersey suburb. My parents, who went to college in America, were not typical Japanese expatriates. They cared little for socializing with Japanese people or Japanese pop culture and thus, I grew up with very little Japanese around me. Except for insisting that I attend Japanese school
In Japan, lawyers rank right below doctors in the list of most respected professions. In the United States, they rank with politicians as one of the most reviled. The difference is striking.
Part of the problem in this country is oversaturation. Compared to Japan, where the passage rate under the old bar exam was around 3%,
I think one of the most troubling flaws of American society is its inability to distinguish "should" from "could." To put another way, we seem to have fatal flaw in saying just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should, and just because you shouldn't do something doesn't mean you couldn't.
A two and a half week absence from my blog has left me with mixed feelings: the gratification in knowing people follow my blog but resignation in knowing they're only interested in my politics. For those who kindly encouraged me to break my silence as Ted Kennedy died and Japan went through an Obama-esque "change,"
Today is my birthday, or rather, yesterday was my birthday. Some may say it's sad to be spending the beginning of the anniversary day of your birth at the office and still be at the office when the day ends, but those are people who likely weren't born in August.
One of the perks of my current job is that I get to travel a lot on someone else's dime. No, I don't get to enjoy whatever that location has to offer, but I get to color in another state and that's pretty cool.
A while back, I got to cross off Missouri and Kansas off
I like history, but not necessarily social science. I don't particularly care for Geography and predictably I'm not particularly good at it.
I find it appalling that 1/3 of Americans can't identify China on an unmarked world map, but then, I'm in no position to critique. I took a mini Japanese Geography quiz at juku, my
While I was in Japan, I read a story along these lines about Australian sailors' efforts to stop Japanese whaling practices and an editorial in a newspaper by an European objecting to how Japan is raping their seas.
I can think of no issue that pisses me off more than the Western objection to Japanese whaling,
