JapanNewbie | Cufon.replace('h2'); Cufon.replace('h3'); var switchTo5x=true;stLight.options({publisher:'wp.3bc38ecd-94e8-4a68-959e-df0bf8376ddd'});var st_type='wordpress3.2.1'; .recentcomments a{display:inline !important;padding:0 !important;margin:0 !important;} Home Contact Me Links Japan Wallpaper JapanNewbie About Art Crazy Consumers Gadgets Culture Food Language Humor Media Books Movies Music Society Working Study Abroad Travel Kyoto Osaka Shanghai Tokyo Gion Matsuri 2012 Posted by harvey in Culture, Kyoto, Travel on 15. Jul, 2012 @ 12:45 am | No Comments

Gion Matsuri is here again! I have been a few times before, in 2004 and in 2005 it seems from my old blog entries… quite some time ago… Gion Matsuri is a multi-day event. This time I went for Yoiyama. During Yoiyama the floats are all lit up and line the streets of Kyoto. The [...]

More Featured Stories Mochi and Anko: and other Japanese sweets This is another guest post from my friend, Yuko (@guideyu and @guideyu_) from Guide-Yu, the super personalized Japan tour guide! Yuko is awesome. She’s Japanese – but she also is an avid Kabuki fan, makes Japanese sweets in her spare time, and even dances traditional Japanese buyou! A true fan of Japanese culture. Today she [...]

May, the season of fresh greenery. This is a guest post from my personal friend, Yuko (@guideyu and @guideyu_) from Guide-Yu, the super personalized Japan tour guide! Yuko is awesome. She’s Japanese – but she also is an avid Kabuki fan, makes Japanese sweets in her spare time, and even dances traditional Japanese buyou! A true fan of Japanese culture. Today [...]

Five Ways to get or stay Stuck in an Expat Bubble Expat Bubble FAIL How to Increase your Chances of Getting Stuck in an Expat Bubble. Living in a foreign country and tired of constantly being bombarded by foreign sounds, smells, and events? Don’t you just wish you could curl up inside an expat bubble and never come out? Well you’re in luck. This article is [...]

Matsumoto Shaved Ice in Hawaii I took a vacation to Hawaii and was surprised at all the Japanese people, language, and culture thriving on the island! Many signs are bilingual English-Japanese, and there are even shops that accept Japanese yen in Waikiki. A few nights ago we went to a karaoke shop that had more Japanese songs than English on [...]

Osaka Motor Show 2012 I went to the Osaka Motor Show! (I was in Japan last week, back in Shanghai already though.) This was my first motor show, but it was basically what I expected. A geeks paradise. Cars, girls, lots of guys with cameras, and an excuse to point your camera at anything and take 100,000 photos in [...]

Locohama’s Book: My Name is Loco and I am a Racist Well, another Japan blogger has beat me to self-publishing! (I really need to get on that.) Baye from Loco in Yokohama has finished his book! His blog is extremely popular so I’m sure his book will be enjoyed by many. His book is called “Hi! My Name is Loco and I am a Racist” and [...]

Okonomiyaki in Shanghai at Takenosuke I’m still living in Shanghai – and I’m still enjoying Japanese food whenever I can! Today I checked out an Okonomiyaki place with my wife and her friend… and her friend’s 5-year old who happened to sleep on the floor throughout the entire meal… the slacker. Okonomiyaki at Takenosuke in Shanghai The name of the [...]

Road Trip: Osaka to Hida Takayama and between Osaka family road trip! We are living in Shanghai now, which makes a quick trip to Japan every now and then surprisingly quick and affordable. I took a few days off of work a few weeks ago to take a 5 day trip back to Osaka to catch up with the in-laws and meet some [...]

Japanese Food in Shanghai: Kogumaya In my never ending quest to eat as much Japanese food as possible, my wife and I went to Kogumaya in Shanghai on a Wednesday night for dinner. There were only two of us so we got seats at the counter. On the way to the counter we passed by lots of small rooms filled [...]

World Order: Japanese Street Performance Group I don’t think I can add much to these videos. Just watch. Also check out World Order official website. WORLD ORDER are… 須藤元気（GENKI SUDO）野口　量（RYO NOGUCHI）崎山清之（KIYOYUKI SAKIYAMA）内山隼人（HAYATO UCHIYAMA）森澤祐介（YUSUKE MORISAWA）高橋　昭博（AKIHIRO TAKAHASHI）落合将人（MASATO OCHIAI） Actually… there is one thing I can add. Did you know that the leader of this [...]

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Recently Added Kasagumo – Umbrella Cloud Posted by harvey in Culture, Language on 21. Jul, 2012 @ 2:48 pm | No Comments

New words! More culture! I recently learned the word “kasagumo.” I think I first heard it when I was visiting a Japanese art museum with a friend (@guideyu) and she was surprised I didn’t know the term. It bothers me when Japanese phrases come up in everyday conversation that I don’t recognize… so I looked [...]

A Visit to Pearl Harbor Posted by harvey in Travel on 02. Apr, 2012 @ 6:45 pm | Comments Off

I visited Pearl Harbor during my trip to Hawaii in March. Some photos are below. You can all Google “Pearl Harbor” and read up on the events that took place just as well as anyone, so I’ll spare you the basic history lesson. The Pearl Harbor site is a well run tourist destination and is [...]

Japanese in Hawaii Posted by harvey in Language, Travel on 28. Mar, 2012 @ 6:04 am | Comments Off

I visited Hawaii for the first time this month and was blown away by the amount of Japanese around. There were signs in Japanese, Japanese food, Japanese tourists, white people hawking goods to Japanese tourists in broken Japanese… the whole nine yards! There are countless Japanese restaurants and even an ultra-famous Japanese Shaved Ice Place [...]

OSU to ICU: Scholarships to Study in Japan Posted by harvey in Study Abroad, Travel on 16. Mar, 2012 @ 5:05 pm | Comments Off

Hello readers! I’m not a JapanNewbie anymore, as you know… So I rely on my real JapanNewbie friends to provide insight into what life is like when you’re heading towards Japan nowadays. You may remember David from this previous post covering the intensive Japanese program at OSU. Well, David is back, and he is almost [...]

Expat Bubbles: The Forces that Suck Posted by harvey in Culture, Society on 10. Mar, 2012 @ 1:38 pm | 6 Comments

bubbles Expat bubbles. Or in Japan you might call them gaijin bubbles. What are they? Why are they? Are they all bad? How can you avoid them? Here’s my two cents as someone who has lived in multiple countries, inside and outside of the bubbles. Living in an Expat Bubble You’re living in an “expat [...]

Royal Milk Maid Cafe in Akihabara Posted by harvey in Osaka, Tokyo on 15. Jan, 2012 @ 10:49 am | 2 Comments

I have a friend who is about to head to Japan for the first time, and he wants the Maid Cafe experience. I have been to maid cafe’s before, but not anytime in the past 5+ years or so… so I’m way out of the loop. This youtube introduction of Royal Milk is pretty good, [...]

BBQ Meat Day Explained Posted by harvey in Culture, Humor, Language on 27. Nov, 2011 @ 6:02 pm | 1 Comment

What do these people have in common? Michael Jackson, birthday: August 29, 1958 Bae Yong Joon (Yon-sama), birthday: August 29, 1972 John McCain, birthday: August 29, 1936 Charlie Parker, birthday: August 29, 1920 Right! Their birthdays are the same! But what about their birthdays is special and interesting to those of us studying Japanese language [...]

Japanese Language Audio Books on iPad with Rye Studio Posted by harvey in Books, Gadgets, Media on 03. Oct, 2011 @ 9:51 am | 3 Comments

In an effort to boost my pitiful Chinese abilities… I got an App! A company called Rye Studio makes a series of picture book apps for iPhone and iPad that read you a story while showing you the text in Chinese. Listening to target language text being read at native speed while reading along is [...]

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