American Gaijin

  • Welcome to my new-ish site

    This site is about all things NOT learning Japanese. For many years, I’ve posted on a site called Gaijin Learning Japanese. I originally made that site about, well, learning Japanese. It went off the rails, and I just started posting whatever. An argument could be made that I destroyed the site by doing that. That…

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  • Temple, TX EF-2 Tornado

    I don’t know if I’ve told you this, but I currently live in Temple, TX.  On Wednesday, at around 6:50, an EF-2 tornado came tearing through town, and the circulation passed very close to my house. Usually I’m standing outside watching storms approach.  I like storms and they’re pretty cool to watch.  They have interesting…

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  • Bocchi the Jesus

    This is going to be a post about religion, but not a religious post.  If you like these kinds of things, read on.  If not, skip to the next.  I won’t be offended, these thoughts aren’t for everyone. (I posted originally “these thoughts aren’t for anyone”, which is probably true, but I changed it.) I…

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  • You’re Better Off Dumb

    Every now and then I post on this topic.  Both because it needs to be said, and because it’s a topic very close to my heart… for whatever reason. I’m very intelligent.  One of the most intelligent people you’ll meet.  Maybe the most, but there’s always someone smarter, or better, so that’s not at all…

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  • Impostor… Ish syndrome.

    I once worked with a woman who had “impostor syndrome”, and she had it bad.  It paralyzed her.  I couldn’t, and don’t, really understand that – “fake it till you make it” really is a thing.  Sometimes you just have to power through and make it happen.  I think she had a very negative experience…

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  • Lay up your treasures in heaven, not on YouTube.

    I have a rather tumultuous relationship with God, and with the Bible.  But some things just seem so self-evident to me that I don’t even really argue with them.  They’re not just right, they seem right, too. In Matthew 6:19-21 (and I really hate quoting verse, but I’m going somewhere with this, I promise), Jesus…

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  • Men of Culture… Aren’t.

    In the anime fandom (or maybe slightly more accurately the hentai fandom, though I don’t think the lines are that clear), there is a phenomenon of people calling themselves “men of culture”.  Which, of course, refers to liking naked anime girls. I absolutely hate this. These “men of culture” can be called many things.  “cultured”…

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  • What a Difference Thirty Years Makes

    When I went to college, I used to carry a lot of stuff with me.  I took the bus…  and I would lug around a large filing box on wheels full of sheet music, a backpack that had all of my books and stuff in it, another box that had floppies and stuff…  I carried…

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  • Why I Don’t Like Stellar Blade

    So, if you’ve been living under a rock, you might have heard of a game called “Stellar Blade”.  As near as I can tell, it’s a game that has very little of interest to it that isn’t a female body in various states of undress or skimpy dress. That’s…  why I don’t like it. Cutting…

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  • I Refuse to Let it End like This

    Or… “How ‘Bocchi the Rock’ changed my life”. There’s a meme going around the net, or at least there had been a while ago when this anime first came out, that said “She’s just like me fr fr”. (fr is “for real”.) Gotoh Hitori (Bocchi) is not just like me.  Fr or in any other…

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