I climbed Japan's highest mountain "Mt.Fuji" with shorts, boots, a t-shirt,
a bottle of water and a Mars Bar. What was I thinking at first - but at the
end it was no problem mostly because i became numb from the cold -
until the sun rose early in the morning. We took the train to the mountain.
It was awesome and a peaceful journey. Mount Fuji (Fujisan) is 3776
meters - Japan's highest mountain. We started at 6:30 pm from the fifth
station and arrived at the top at 1:00 am an elevation of 3,776 m… Continue

Akio Morita and Shintaro Ishihara in The Japan That Can Say No and the accompanying trends of the subsequent decade and a half admirably began to put an end to the cycle of Japan imitating the West. However, now Japan needs the next step, and that is the topic of this essay.

Recently, we see increasing world awareness of Japanese efforts to improve global political clout. Japanese efforts to obtain a seat on the United Nations Security Council, mutterings about amending Article IX of the… Continue

One thing I wish I had done when I first came to Japan on the JET program in Ishinomaki, Miyagi in 1993, was have people address me by my family name if I address them by their family name. In the vast majority of situations, this is not a problem, but on occasion I have noticed that some Japanese address foreigners by their personal names either because the Japanese individual does not accord foreigners the same respect as Japanese, or because they are trying to belittle the foreigner. Living i… Continue

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Tokyo Girl by ~henroben on deviantART… Continue