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- Meet the Tokyo Sky Tree mascot Sorakara-chan
- October 29th, 2010Category: Culture
- Never underestimate Japan's ability to cutify everything. The mascot character associated with the Tokyo Sky Tree, currently under construction in Sumida ward, was officially introduced Thursday. The character’s name is Sorakara-chan, which, literally translated, mea ... » Continue Reading
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- Japan’s Police Mascots
- October 26th, 2010Category: Culture
- Pipo-kun; the mascot for the Tokyo police force has been hogging the lime light for too long. Most people don't even know that there's not one but more than forty police characters, one for each prefecture. Created in 1987 Pipo-kun was the first but year after year he ... » Continue Reading
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- Finding Balance: The Importance of both Traditional and Mixed Martial Arts
- October 25th, 2010Category: Culture
- One of the interesting things about the evolution of cage fighting and sport MMA is that it seems to have caused a splinter effect within the martial arts community. On one side you have the ‘traditionalists’ who feel that martial arts never have been (and never will ... » Continue Reading
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- Japan entering the age of living alone
- October 19th, 2010Category: Culture
- From the extended family to the nuclear family; from the nuclear family to solitude — by 2030, 37.4% of Japanese households will be single-occupant. As of now, single-occupant and family households (parents with children) are in rough balance. By 2030, the latter will ... » Continue Reading
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- Too much katakana contributing to Japan’s malaise
- October 18th, 2010Category: Culture
- We all know the story - after World War II, Japan spent decades propelling itself to the summit of economic and technological achievement. Now with 20 years of a stalled growth – what was it all for? A question that has popped up in more and more and ways in the Jap ... » Continue Reading
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- Japanese comic beer
- October 6th, 2010Category: Culture
- Japan Trends first spotted this in a downtown Tokyo supermarket, a beer that combines Japan's love of drinking with another of the country's great passions, manga. As the consumer site notes, the Sapporo black-label branded beer has been released before in southern J ... » Continue Reading
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- Extreme sports as martial arts cross-training
- September 28th, 2010Category: Culture, Outdoor/Sports
- In the last blog entry I spoke about the advantages to using capoeira for martial arts and/or sports cross-training. In this entry however, I would like to shoot to the opposite end of the spectrum and share my experience using extreme sports as a way to cross-train f ... » Continue Reading
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- The real China vs. Japan: Panda vs. Ninja? (video)
- September 27th, 2010Category: Culture
- Last week was a chilly one for Japan on the diplomatic front, with the country caught in a war of words with major economic rival China. The detention of a Chinese fishing boat captain, released this weekend, led to some stringent payback from China, blocking exports ... » Continue Reading
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- Samurai Star Wars Prints offer a new way to see the classic
- September 27th, 2010Category: Culture
- Akira Kurosawa and Japanese cinema were a huge influence on a young George Lucas as he put together what became Star Wars – but what would happen if that influence traveled back the other way? Spoke Art has imagined just that, producing a great range of traditional J ... » Continue Reading
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- Japanese hacker responsible for Twitter attack
- September 24th, 2010Category: Culture
- We have covered Twitter's popularity in Japan a little previously (here and here) and the mico-blogging platform was again closely linked to Japan when it was attacked last week by what appears to be a Japanese hacker. The man in question, however, suggests he was on ... » Continue Reading
- Why do Japanese people change their attitude when they communicate with foreigners?
- February 8, 2012
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- 10 things that you should know before coming to Japan
- February 6, 2012BY
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- Unique Japanese fashion styles
- March 10, 2012BY
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- Cats, Numbers and Other Japanese Superstitions
- June 12, 2012BY
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- Hakone: A Day Trip to Remember
- January 30, 2013BY
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