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Why I am Christian

Why I am Christian

I’m not really going to talk bout Japanese today. Something has been on my mind lately, and I feel like I need to write about it. If the topic turns you off, feel free to skip the post, or even unsubscribe if it turns you off that much. Or you could, I don’t know, read it, maybe? I promise it won’t be just disgorging dogma. I can’t stand dogma. Maybe it’ll even be interesting. I have a particular curse in my life that many people don’t seem to share, and… Read More »Why I am Christian

Lamentations

It has been amonth since I’ve posted. I should post something. I have been putting little effort into Japanese lately, if I’m to be honest. I’ve been mostly, when I do study Japanese, just looking at Japanese media and looking up things that might interest me. It is nice to have a sensei at these times, because she can help me learn things I don’t know, but I find that half the time, she doesn’t know either. In some ways I’m truly on my own, and in some ways I’m… Read More »Lamentations

Burning

I don’t really feel much like writing on this blog anymore.  That’s not to say I won’t, but I just don’t feel like it. The past few months have been terrible.  I have a hard time describing exactly how bad they’ve been.  I am lucky because I still have a job and I haven’t yet been negatively impacted financially.  But the world around me seems to be burning.  First we start with a deadly virus that doesn’t seem to be going away.  Then, the large cities in my country start… Read More »Burning

Gimme Chocolate

The year is 1945.  Japan has been ravaged as a nation, and many of its larger cities have been bombed into an unrecognizable mess.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s core business districts are flattened wastelands of radioactive rubble, and hundreds of thousand of Japanese citizens have been killed.  Most of those citizens had nothing whatsoever to do with the war.  They were just living their live, and some politician somewhere decided they were going to go to war with the United States, as well as committing atrocities all over the pacific rim.… Read More »Gimme Chocolate

Idols

My first real introduction to Japan and Japanese was through idol culture.  Morning Musume, to be precise.  So it’s no surprise that I’m unusually knowledgeable about the subject.  I can name quite a few idols from Morning Musume, AKB48, Sakura Gakuin, and a few others besides.  And those that I can’t name, I might be able to recognize. I know about the scandals of both Sashihara Rino and Minegishi Minami, and how they resolved.  I know why those scandals occurred in the first place, and I understand some of the cultural… Read More »Idols

Racism and Leftism in Japan

I have been, for the most part, specifically avoiding this topic on this blog, and being very careful about how I engage with it elsewhere.  The environment right now is very toxic, and quite frankly, it’s not really on topic for this blog (or, if we’re to be honest, many of the other places it’s being discussed right now).  There’s a lot of virtue signalling going on right now – like, an almost intolerable amount of it, and I do not have any desire to get on that bandwagon.  Plus… Read More »Racism and Leftism in Japan

Gaijin

I heard a story. This is a story that appeared on one of the Reddit subreddits that are dedicated to stories.  It could have been MaliciousCompliance, or ProRevenge.  I can’t remember.  It’s not important. Our protagonist was working at a Japanese company somewhere in California.  The managers there were Japanese nationals, and the employees were gaijin.  As far as the Japanese managers knew, no one there could speak Japanese. So they basically ran roughshod over everyone.  It finally came to a head when a manager who had it in for the… Read More »Gaijin

Kawaii Aidoru

YouTube is an incredible distraction throughout most of the issues that have been going on in the world, and in my country. One thing I’ve been watching is Babymetal reactions.  It’s quite amusing to see someone reacting for the first time – “Well, this is a band with… three girls?  And they’re Asian?  Korean maybe?  Well, I have no idea what to expect…”  “SOMEONE GIVE THOSE GIRLS SOME CHOCOLATE”  Anyway, I find it amusing. There’s this one guy, NeonReaperGaming, who has been really going down the foxhole – to the point where… Read More »Kawaii Aidoru

Majime

When I was a teenager, I used to attend what could laughably be called a Bible Study. I say “laughable”, because it was for teenagers, and I may have been the only person in that room with a Bible, and ready to study.  I didn’t know what that meant, but that was the purpose of the meeting, and so, I was ready to do what was necessary. That did not happen, though.  They did everything but.  They played stupid games, they announced social events, they did absolutely everything but study the… Read More »Majime

The Westernization of Japan

I watched an interesting thing on YouTube about the history of Japan on my lunch break today, and in doing so, I discovered something really interesting.  It was Americans that kind of forced Japan’s hand and caused them to open up after several centuries of self imposed isolation. Japan has always struck me as a really interesting mix, but I haven’t been able to figure out why.  It is almost as if they would like nothing more than to retreat back into their period of isolation, but can’t.  There’s this… Read More »The Westernization of Japan