Rooftop Amusement Parks (Okujo Yuenchi 屋上遊園地)

There isn’t much space in Japan, and what space is available is used to fit in as much as possible, given the high value of each meter. This has lead to some creative uses of roofs in the country. For a while, putting amusement parks on the top of department store roofs was wildly popular, […]

Valentine's Day in Japan

If you’ve lived in Asia before, this may sound familiar. For those of you who have never been, particularly those in America, you may know Valentine’s Day as a holiday where, traditionally, it is expected that the man makes a grand gesture of sorts to show his love for his partner. That has changed a […]

Healing Characters, Healing Women

When I started researching this post, my goal was to write and expand upon the Yuru-Kyara (mascot) article I had written before. That was before I upped my Japanese Google-fu and saw a ton of articles comparing the characteristics of healing characters with people, specifically, women, and how they can nurture those healing traits and […]

Disaster Awareness in Japan

Listen, if we’re being honest, Japan, on paper, seems to be a pretty inhospitable environment: It’s susceptible to numerous earthquakes, typhoons, tsunamis, and hosts numerous active volcanoes. In spite of all of these signals that Mother Nature might be telling them to beat it, the Japanese have managed and mitigated disasters pretty well. There have […]

Coming of Age Day – Seijin no Hi (成人の日)

20. This is a most important number in Japan. This is the age at which you transition from childhood to adulthood, the age at which you leave behind childish things and begin to take control of your own destiny. But how do you do that? Well, put on your fanciest outfit and join us for […]

The Deadliest Food in Japan: Mochi

You thought it was pufferfish (fugu), didn’t you? Well, as risky as that particular food may be, it doesn’t hold a candle to that sticky rice confection that takes the widest variety of forms. Usually, Japan sees a spike around New Year’s in hospitalizations from eating this treat, as well as a few deaths. What […]

Osouji: New Year's Big Cleaning

In America, we have Spring Cleaning, that magical time of year where we finally get up off of our lazy butts and clean everything we’d been meaning to for a long time. The techniques can vary, purging of goods is common, and in the end, we use it as a bit of a metaphor for […]

Things I Liked in 2019

Last year, I attempted to cobble together a “Best of 2018” post that turned out really disappointing for me. I waited too long and didn’t give myself enough time to really write it out in a thoughtful and appealing manner. This year, to combat that, and to avoid an Instagram Top 9 post, I’ve done […]

Kashiya Yokocho: Penny Candy Lane

Back in Japanese history, there were concentrated areas where candy was produced. For a while, this humble street in Kawagoe produced all the candy for Japan. Nowadays, it holds onto the traditional candy-making ways and acts more as a tourist attraction than a functional factory of confections.

Warm Biz

With every Yin, there is a Yang. When I first got here, I found out about Cool Biz, the incredibly hot trend of keeping your office cooled to a balmy 83 degrees in order to reduce energy consumption and help keep emissions under control. But did you know there is a winter equivalent? Well, there […]