Good morning! It’s Labor Day in my country today, which for most people means a day off, barbecues, that kind of thing. I am taking the week off. I have been working at my company for over five years, which means I get three weeks now, and I plan on
I have been slowly going through AKB48’s discography and writing review posts for my new site. I knew I would learn stuff about Japanese culture I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I’d learn. The title of this post is the English translation of an AKB48 song called “Seifuku Ga
Now that I have made clear what the purpose of this blog is going to be moving forward, I feel like I am a little freer to make the posts I want to make, here. So that’s a good thing. Today I’m going to try to put words to something
After having spent most of the day adding a bit of spit and polish to the new site, I wrote the first post. If you’re interested, you can find it here. (Of course, if you’re not, don’t bother clicking, I won’t be offended). This post was about AKB48’s first single,
A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about Akimoto Yasushi, the guy who founded the AKB48 jpop empire. Akimoto Yasushi – Good or Evil? I want to revisit that post now. As I’ve become more familiar with Japanese culture, I’ve begun to see nuances that I didn’t before.
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
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
Namida no hanabiratachi ga harahara The blooming of the sakura trees in Japan is a joyful, yet bittersweet moment, as they, in a very real way mark the passage of time. The passage of time is both a time for new beginnings, and bittersweet goodbyes. Sometimes goodbyes are temporary, sometimes they
As I might have mentioned at one point, I am a classically trained musician. I am familiar with most of the works of many major composers, but my favorite classical pieces – or romantic pieces, as the case may be, are some of the more famous piano concertos. Those by
A recurring theme of this site is my continued wonder at why I’m bothering to learn Japanese at all. I mean, it is an interesting language, it’s difficult, it’s a challenge. All these things are true. But at the end of the day, as a gaikokujin, I find that my reasons