Hi-kara Karaoke Machine
Posted by harvey in Crazy Consumers, Gadgets, Music on 31. Jan, 2009 | No Comments
New toy alert! If you’ve ever lived in Japan you’ve most likely enjoyed karaoke on more than one occasion. With this new product called “Hi-kara”, brought to you straight from Japan by TheJapanShop.com, now you can sing Karaoke at home with friends as often as you like… and even download the most popular songs from [...]
Japan-quality Customer Service in the States
Posted by harvey in Culture on 28. Jan, 2009 | 3 Comments
This is a completely out of the ordinary post. I use backpacks and shoulder bags made by a company called SpireUSA. I have purchased 3 bags from Spire so far. One for someone else as a gift, and 2 for myself (one backpack and one shoulder bag). I recommend them highly. This company makes great [...]
Kurosawa – I Live in Fear
Posted by harvey in Media on 25. Jan, 2009 | 7 Comments
Like most Japan-heads I have seen a lot of Kurosawa movies. The standard Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and Rashomon are some of my favorites. Now that I’m in school again and have access to a university library I have been borrowing Japanese films like a madman. Having re-watched most of my favorites already, I’m slowly breaking [...]
A Desperate Game of Paper Scissors Rock. And Harisen.
Posted by harvey in Culture, Humor, Media, Society on 24. Jan, 2009 | 6 Comments
An intense paper scissors rock battle ensues. This is a game show featuring the stars of the famous comedy duo Downtown. Hama-chan (浜ちゃん) is the guy playing paper scissors rock in this video, and Machan (松っちゃん) is the referee. The rules for this game go something like this: Each participant throws their chosen sign (paper [...]
Baraka: many interesting Japan scenes
Posted by harvey in Media on 19. Jan, 2009 | 3 Comments
I recently watched Baraka, a beautiful film featuring scenes of humanity from around the world. Lots of the scenes in the film were shot in Asia, and there are a significant amount from Japan. I don’t have a blue-ray player so I saw it on DVD, but word on the street says it is one [...]
Japan as Number One
Posted by harvey in Books, Society on 15. Jan, 2009 | 2 Comments
One of my professors mentioned as an aside in class today that the best selling non-Japanese language non-fiction book in Japan to this day (though, this needs to be verified, he said) is Japan As Number 1 – Lessons For America Released in 1979, around the period when “Japan Bashing” in the 1980s would become [...]
Laughing in Japanese
Posted by harvey in Language on 10. Jan, 2009 | 9 Comments
There are many ways to describe laughter in Japanese. 笑う (warau) is to main verb “to laugh”. It can also mean to smile, depending on the context. There are many more phrases to express laughter or smiling in Japanese, and many use the same 笑 Kanji character. Note that not all of these phrases are [...]
Textbooks for learning and teaching Japanese
Posted by harvey in Books, Language on 06. Jan, 2009 | 9 Comments
My wife is thinking about trying to teach Japanese to people in the neighborhood as a side-business. She knows Japanese, of course, but has never taught it, so now she has to “study” Japanese in order to build up a lesson plan. Luckily with the excellent textbooks available for Japanese learning this isn’t going to [...]
