Archive | August, 2008
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The importance of business cards (Meishi)

Business cards, or meishi (MAY-SHE), are extremely important here, so very much more important that they are in the States. This is because social rank is extremely important here. Basically, one is above or below someone, never equal. This assessment of level is critical in determining social interaction. People just don’t know how to talk to each other without information of social rank.

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Human Tetris! (i.e. crazy Japanese game shows)

My buddy Neil pointed me towards this. Another great example of the completely insane game shows they have in this country. Human tetris!

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Fortune and glory, kid (or, I was interviewed)

Steve Rhode over at Open Source Blogging interviewed me about my recent move to deny copyright on everything I write.

Go read it.

And if you missed the announcement, go read about my decision to give everything I write away.

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10 interesting Japanese sound effects (or onomatopoeia)

Onomatopoeia is the technical term for words that imitate sounds. Every language has them. A few English examples are “woof woof” and “meow meow”. Japanese has them too, but for some reason or another Japanese has many many many more of them than most languages, including English. These words are interesting and worth learning, not just because.. well, they are interesting, but also because people use them in normal speech quite a bit. I think this is because using an onomatopeia sometimes gets across your feelings easier than trying to explain in more concrete words.

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Big eyes are so kawaii!

Anyone who had watched Japanese animé knows the big eye look is in. Girls in animé are drawn with these massive eyes that fill their entire face. This has the effect of making the entire face look smaller and increasing the attractiveness (everyone knows smaller faces are cuter!).

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Wax food

A strange thing you might notice here, whenever you go to a

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Everything is free!

Just a note, I finally got around to adding a copyright notice here. Some have been emailing me about the need to do this, and it seems like every other article I have read these past few days were about it. But just because I hate being told what to do, my copyright notice is me giving up any claim to a copyright.

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Square watermelons

Has this ever happened you know — you go to cut a regular, round watermelon and it just rolls away from you, making it impossible to cut. And when you do finally

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New Theme

Trying a new theme. Let me know what you think.

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