Am I Otaku or even weeaboo? This is a question I’m asking myself more and more lately. I mean, I guess I fit some of the definitions. I like JPop – enough so that I’m maintaining an entire website about it, and other pop culture things. I’m familiar enough with
Kawaii may be the only real Japanese word many people know. And they really don’t know what it means. It’s usually translated as “cute”. And that’s one of the meanings, for sure. Maybe it’s even the primary meaning. But that’s not really what it means. They actually have another word
Let’s get back to basics, I suppose. From the very moment I began learning Japanese, and even before, I became aware of a specific breed of person – one that I instinctively had very little respect for. This type of person was called a “weeb”, which is short for “weeaboo”.
Over the past few years, My thoughts on Japanese culture have taken a very definite arc. I started out with a general sense of admiration, but then decided that I wanted to learn more about their language and culture. I immersed myself into learning as much as I could about
In the cult I grew up in, throughout my childhood, there were some very strict expectations about how one was to behave. One was always to behave in an “upright” manner – to be honest, the ideas of tatemae and honne are not really all that foreign to me, as
I like to say that I’m never really wrong – as my decisions and opinions are nearly always right based upon the information I have. But sometimes I don’t have enough information, so as I get more information, my opinions can change. That kind of makes my previous ones wrong.
I honestly don’t have a whole lot of experience, or interest, in anime or anime-inspired things. I have seen some anime, and I was impressed with it technically. By which I mean, there is often a lot of care put into how the higher quality animes are animated. I remember watching