American Gaijin
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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…
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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…
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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. …
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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…
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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…
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Shades of Grey
Not of the “fifty” variety, sorry. Maybe that will be an appropriate topic in the far distant future, but not today. Over the past few days, my country has been in the throes of a great deal of civil unrest. It was precipitated by a very unfortunate event in Minneapolis. I don’t really want to…
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Motteke! Sailor Fuku
I don’t think I can describe how bad 2020 has been in so many ways, both personally and on a macro level. But I don’t have to, because most of you have experienced it. First a virus from China showed up and pretty much shut the world down for a few months, and now idiots…
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Matsuri
My formative years were troubled. I have many horrible memories, of which I refuse to go into here – they’re personal, and it’s not appropriate. But the memories were not all bad. Every year we had a religious festival – we called it the Festival of Tabernacles, or the “feast” for short. It was in…