REACTING TO “STATEMENTS” in Japanese. Description Reacting the Japanese Way 1 introduces you to 12 commonly used feedback expressions Japanese people use when reacting to statements. They are divided into 3 categories Positive (blue), Neutral (yellow), & Negative (pink) feedback. You can be sure you won’t find this in a text book because this is the real [...]
Archives for “Blog Entry”
Every year on May 3rd and 5th, there is a “big kite festival” held off the river bank of the Edogawa in Kasukabe City, Saitama Prefecture. There are basically 3 types of kites that are used during the event. The first are sponsor and/or community participant kites that measure about 2m X 1.5m. Second are [...]
Starbucks VIA made its debut in Japan today (April 14, 2010) with two flavors: Columbia & Italian Roast. Perfect timing as Japan’s instant coffee drinkers are on a major rise according to tonight’s news. The news story featured a coffee machine that uses instant coffee to make a fresh cup of Joe. The company limits [...]
What started being built in July 2008 has just made history. Tokyo Sky Tree (the new digital antenna), when finished will stand at 634 meters high… but that’s at the end of 2011. Until 10:16a.m. today (March 29th, 2010); Tokyo Tower, 333 meters high, was the tallest standing man-made structure in Japan. A little after [...]
It snowed for the third time this year. I didn’t have the chance to make any snowmen the first two times. And amazingly every time it snowed here in the Kanto area, the next day it was pretty warm, but I made sure to make some time to make my snowmen this time, even though over [...]
About a week ago my wife went on a two day trip for work, which meant it would be the first time our little one and a half year old baby girl would have to go to bed without mommy. Baby didn’t know what was coming, but daddy did. And daddy was terrified! (Now that [...]
Here is a former post on Girl’s Day in Japan. It features the Hina Ningyo or Girl’s Day Dolls. CLICK HERE!
Yesterdays (8.8 magnitude) earthquake in Chile has sent waves across the Pacific Ocean. Shortly after tsunami warnings were lifted in Hawaii, tsunami alerts were announced for the Pacific Ocean facing areas of Japan from Hokkaido all the way down to Okinawa with big wave warnings from Aomori to Miyagi coastlines (northern Japan). Over 100,000 families [...]
This is not exactly new news, but the other day I stopped by the convenience store and I happened to see “Pepsi Azuki” (azuki are red beans usually made into a paste and used as a filling for rice cakes aka. manju). NO WAY! How could they put that into soda? Well, I didn’t try [...]
Yes there is now a vending machine that sells acne care. Now I’m not sure if this has already been released in other countries, but I was just surprised to see it at the shopping mall the other day. This was put out by “proative” the world wide brand for healthy skin care. Watch the [...]
Here is the continuation to the last video I posted. I had a visit to an Elementary School and decided to play in the snow with them during recess, but that turned out to be a bad choice. The video shows part of it, but it was really crazy. I was getting attacked from all [...]
The Kanto area had it’s first big snow in two years. This video is actually taken in Saitama Prefecture, right above Tokyo. We had pretty hard rain on February 1st, 2010 from the afternoon which eventually turned to snow overnight. We woke up to this white blanket of snow which was everywhere in the [...]
No, not Seasame Street Big Bird! The other day at work, I happened to see something big land on the roof of one of our school buildings. It was a big bird called “sagi” in Japanese, known as a “heron” in English. These birds are known to inhabit areas with large bodies of water, I [...]
I probably mentioned this before, but one of Japan’s unique Christmas traditions includes the purchase of a “Christmas Cake”. I believe the popular cake of choice is short cake decorated with Christmas related items. On TV I’ve seen other types of Christmas Cakes that run up to ¥20,000 ($200+) and higher. Well this year I [...]
If you happen to be sightseeing in Tokyo, one popular shopping area is found on the man-made island known as “Odaiba”. It is also the home of FUJI TV one of the main television networks (the TV station building is a sight in itself). And this is where you can see this funky, warped escalator. [...]
No, this is not a swine flu vending machine or vaccine vending machine. BUT I just wanted to apologize for the big gap from my last post. I was getting attacked left and right. I started out with a cold and a pretty bad cough to the point of losing my voice. I went to [...]
What can you get for 1000yen ($10) at McDonald’s? Well for the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed that almost every McDonald’s parking lot has been jam packed with at least 5 to 10 cars (plus) lined up on the street waiting to get in during lunch time. I first noticed this when I had to [...]
OMEDETOU (CONGRATULATIONS), “Godzilla” Hideki Matsui!!! Hats off to Matsui in attaining the highest award possible as a player in Major League Baseball, MVP of the World Series. He becomes the first Japanese born baseball player to receive this award. Catch the whole story on the Yankees home page. Matsui MVP story video (click here) Matsui’s MVP interview [...]
Well, Burger King Japan has decided to extend their “7 layer Whopper” for just a bit longer. So if you missed it they extended it till (I believe) this Friday (11/6). You can check out the home page link two posts down from this one.
Here’s just another look at Halloween in Japan. This one is at a shopping mall where they had a costume corner for people to wear and take pictures in front of their balloon-made monster house.
(I’m not sure if this same thing is happening around the world, but…) Burger King, Japan and Microsoft have partnered together in promoting the new “Windows 7″ operating system by creating the “7 Layer Whopper”. For one week only (October 22 to 28) this 7 patty hamburger is being offered daily to the first 30 [...]
Can you imagine playing the drums by touching your friends? Can you imagine tapping your friend’s hand and hearing a snare drum? Then flicking another friend on the forehead and hearing a bass drum? And finally slapping another friend in the face (softly, of course) and hearing a symbol crashing? Well, last night on TV [...]
Check out this vending machine. It sells SOY candy bars called, “SoyJoy”. The flavors include orange chocolate, raisins & almonds, prune, mango & coconut, strawberry, and banana. They sell for about a buck (¥100). The best thing about them is that they make you “HAPPY” because they are “healthy”. “What a JOY!” (OK, I’ll stop [...]
Could it be possible to study Japanese using grapes? It’s highly unlikely, but I saw a television program that claimed that you can find the kanji (chinese character) for “mountain” in the seeds of grapes. Not just any grapes… in Japan’s “Kyoho grapes” or giant grapes (although I never tried it on other grapes). Of [...]
The electronic company Sharp came out with its new Solar Cell Phone this summer. If you forget your charger cable, you can just put it in the sun to get it charged. The three major cell phone companies (Softbank, Docomo, and AU) all have solar products made by Sharp. The phones are also waterproof. Below [...]
