Category: Japan
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Fumie Hiratai’s closing party / Viola performance
A friend of mine, Fumie Hiratai (平体文枝), is an artist and recently had a show at a very interesting book shop, the Morioka Bookstore. It is a cute little book store in an art building (the Inoue Building in Kayabacho) that has a bunch of old photo books and other random art focused books. There […]
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Namja Town
Namja Town Cat Namco beer! Ice Cream City All my Namjatown pictures All Flickr Namjatown pictures On Wednesday, I had a day off from work on Wednesday, so I met up with Risa and we went to Namja Town. Namja Town is a strange place in Ikebukuro, Tokyo that is essentially a food-based theme park […]
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Cherry Blossoms in Shinjuku Gyoen
Shinjuku Gyoen Sakura Photoset On Sunday, April 1st, the weather suddenly became beautiful, despite earlier predictions of rain. My friend Risa and I decided on the spur-of-the-moment to head over to the Shinjuku Gyoen National Park (新宿御苑) for some Cherry Blossom Viewing. It is hard to think of anything more traditionally Japanese than a good […]
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Sakura on the walk home
The other day, while walking home from Jiyugaoka, I was struck by how pretty the Sakura were on the main shopping street. I snapped a few pictures, and of course since the weather was nice there were lots of people lined up for Crepes at the cute little crepe stand. There were also some nice […]
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Ishiyama-dera
Dragon’s Hole Pond Entire Ishiyama-dera photo set on Flickr.com After the Japanese Natural Language Processing Conference, I had a few hours before returning to Tokyo, so I went to the nearby Ishiyama temple, which is said to be where the Japanese author Murasaki began writing the Tale of Genji. It is a really beautiful temple, […]
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Review of Wataya Risa’s “Keritai Senaka” / 綿矢リサの「蹴りたい背中」
Winner of 2003 Akutagawa Prize Wikipedia page on Wataya Risa Excerpt of translation by Morgan G. A few weeks ago, I finished reading Wataya Risa’s second novel, 『蹴りたい背中』 (“The back I wanna kick”). For me, it was a minor milestone: it was the first Japanese novel that I have read in Japanese. I’ve studied the […]
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Maid Cafés in Japan
Pinafore Maid Cafe The witch bar unattico-sttrega January 15th 社会研究調査 As part of a societal cultural research learning field trip, Benkei and I went with a friend of his to the Pinafore Maid Cafe. We went on a Wednesday evening, in the rain. This actually turned out to be pretty important, but more on that […]
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Nationalism / Isolationalism in Japan and perception of foreign crime
I read a few blogs, and an interesting post over on What Japan Thinks about a survey on crime in Japan (and how foreigners are a large contributing factor) pointed me to another very interesting post over on Debito.org on a Japanese magazine about foreigner crime. It is definitely worth taking a look at both […]
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Happy Cheap Chocolate Day!!
Today is one of my favorite days of the year. The day after Valentine’s Day. Cheap Chocolate Day. When I stopped into 7-eleven this morning for my morning yogurt and bottle of lemon water, they were running 50% off of their Valentine’s Day Chocolate. Valentine’s Day is pretty big here in Japan, even more so […]
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Best little bar in Jiyugaoka
I just wanted to drop a link to my friend Ahmadu’s (spelling is almost positively incorrect) bar, Saraba. It is a bar and art gallery in between Jiyugaoka and Kuhombutsu, so it is right on the way home for me. I’ve been stopping in there lately for a nightly glass of wine. The bar is […]