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Someone asked us recently about theme iizakayas in Japan, so we thought we'd write a little bit about them.

By the way, Peter's music is available on reverbnation.com/svenpete. Check it out!

Okay, back to theme iizakayas. Wait, what's an iizakaya, you ask? Peter, can you help us out on this one?


Ok Brian,… Continue

You may have seen that we have another podcast, and in this podcast Peter and I talk about a few Japanese horror and anime films. If you’ve seen any of them, we’d love to hear your opinions. Here again are some of the Japanese writers and directors we mentioned:

Koji Suzuki - writer for the Ring series

… Continue

It's a little late, but here are some notes and pictures from the Iidabashi podcast, where Peter and I talked about Iidabashi, an area in central Tokyo, on the Sobu line.

Here's a view from the station, standing on the bridge, looking right:

And here's a picture looking over the b… Continue

I've added an audio file of an interview with my friend Taka about convenience stores in Japan (we did this one in English). We talked about the different convenience stores you can find in Japan, and how Japanese convenience stores are different from convenience stores in the U.S.

Taka also taught me some abbreviations (shouryaku) that are commonly used for some of the stores:

Convenience store = "Combini"
Family Mart = "Famima"
7-Eleven = "Sebun"
Daily Yamazaki = "Daily"

We also talked in J… Continue

We have a new section on the homepage (for now) where you can listen to rakugo. It's down on the bottom left. Farther. That's it.

I thought I'd explain a little bit about rakugo for those who are new to the genre. Rakugo is a traditional form of Japanese live entertainment where one person (pretty much always a guy, I think) sits on a stage and tells jokes to the audience. At least, that's what I've seen on TV. At least I think he tells jokes. I'll be honest with you, the vocabulary in rakugo i… Continue