If you’re like me, whenever you need a quick translation, you are probably a “regular” at the alc site. But what do you set as your home page if you are also a regular at both Google and Stippy? Now that there is a Google bar at the top of Stippy.com, part of that problem [...]

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Even though it is widely believed that Japan is one of the most male chauvinistic (anti-female rights) countries in the developed world, it is hard to get a Japanese person to admit to that fact. Why is that so? We all know that Japan and the Japanese like to appear to keep the peace and [...]

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All sorts of mail is bulging out of the postbox, but the thick wads of legal letters stand out. A peep inside through the windows of the Tokyo apartment provides no hint that anybody has lived inside for a while.

It’s the home of Hiroyuki Nishimura, the 29-year-old webmaster of Ni-Chaneru, the huge bulletin board that is arguably the Japanese language Internet’s most popular — and most notorious — site.

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Let me introduce for you the first in our series of “Only in Japan” videos, made by two professional screenwriter/directors while they were living in Tokyo. Simon Adams (who provided a previous article as a guest writer), and Andrew Johnson were pleased to offer us the “exclusive” internet screening rights (yeah right..) to their vids [...]

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Mr. Shinzo Abe turns out to be a surprisingly interesting guy a very brief review of his history turns up that Mr. Abe is from a very long line of very successful and very well connected Japanese politicians. His grandfather, on his mother’s side, was Mr. Nobusuke Kishi, who served during the Second World War [...]

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“I never saw it, it wasn’t me!” These are often words uttered by children in the face of being caught doing something that they shouldn’t be doing. This is commonly known in the West as lying, and something that should have been beaten out of us by the time we leave primary school. Likewise, if [...]

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