Living Japan

All of the books below I have read in part or whole (some I have written about) and highly recommend if you are studying Japanese literature or even the language, after all, language is culture. Joe's Top Ten Must Reads : Ki no Tsurayuki's Tosa Nikki (土佐日記) 935 Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji Translated by Royall Tyler (源氏物語) 11th century Mori Ogai's The Dancing Girl (舞姫 ) 1890 Natsume Soseki's Kokoro (心) 1914 Tanizaki Junichiro's Naomi (痴人の愛) 1924-1947 Kawabata Yasunari's Snow County (雪国) 1935-1937 Mishima Yukio's Confessions of a Mask (仮面の告白) 1948 Dazai Osamu's No Longer Human (人間失格) 1948 Oe Kenzaburo's The Catch (飼育) 1957 Murakami Haruki's A Wild Sheep Chase (羊をめぐる冒険) 1982 Supplementary Material Donald Keene: Donald Keene the godfather of Japanese literary criticism. Arguably, there is no one who has contributed more to the interpretation of Japanese literature than this man. Modern ...

A Japanese friend of mine and I have been working hard recording episodes for our new Podcast, Train Your English. The podcast features three levels of English instruction; beginner, intermediate and advanced. The advanced level may appeal to those of you who regularly read my blog as it's conducted entirely in English and we discuss very similar topics relate to Japanese culture that I post on my blog here. Definitely check it out! Website: www.trainyourenglish.com iTunes Podcast Android Podcast

B efore diving into spiritualism, I need to discuss the foundation with which spiritualism is build upon in the West and in Japan. And before I get too far it would be appropriate to define what I mean by "the West". For the sake of convenience, when I talk about the "West" I am talking about cultures who embrace and have a rich tradition in or relation to Greek philosophy as a frame work for rationalizing nearly everything (Americas, Europe, parts of Eurasia and the middle east). Okay, so lets get into it. In the West when we try to rationalize the world around us, we often do so through the lens of Dualism. Dualism is the idea that there are always two opposing or contrasting concepts for nearly everything. For example, good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, man vs. nature, etc. It also explains why westerners, and very much the English language, is geared for discussion and debate. Conversely, pluralism is very dominate in the Japanese world view. Pluralism is th...

Wabi_Sabi W hat a ride! The last two and a half months have been a roller coaster ride to remember. As Wabi_Sabi's drummer, I'll be wrapping up the year with a collaborative live show in Hadano (秦野) AEON mall. The performance will feature Wabi_Sabi and another up and coming jazz pianist, Jacob.  So far we have played 18 live shows, traveled over a 1000km all the way from Niigata in the west to Hamatsu in southern Shizuoka and as far north as Sendai. We stayed in hotels, campers, manga cafes, cars, you name it. We played gigs in front of 100's of people on the street, and live shows in front of empty seats. So goes the life of a performer. While there have been a lot of things I've taken  from this experience, there are two things in particular I'll write about in this post. First is my Japanese, and second is my personal growth as a foreigner in Japan. Being with Benny and Hiro on the road for days at a time has given me an opportunity to grow as an...

Wabi_Sabi I have been given an extremely rare opportunity to be a part of a project that I can honestly say not many foreigners have had. Starting this month I will be touring with a professional band all over Japan as a their drummer. I'm super excited for this opportunity and because of the rarity of the situation I thought it would be an interesting topic to share with you all. With this shift in blogging I'll get a chance to publicize my band overseas and also give some of you who may be interested in playing in a band in Japan an inside look at the industry. Last month I accepted an offer to play with Wabi_Sabi, a band that's been active all around Honshu, Japan for the last 5 years. You can visit the website here and listen to our music and find out where we are playing. We are currently working on an English page which should be available soon. If you can't read Japanese and want to come see us live then go ahead and friend me on Facebook and you ca...

I was in the hospital attending to my father-in-law who, at the time, was suffering from ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). By this time, my father had lost the ability to speak and was on a life-supporting respirator machine. One morning I walked into his room to check on him and saw a panicked look on his face. I could hear wheezing from the tube providing oxygen to his lungs, and his faced started turing red. I noticed there was a nurse in the room attending to another patient, but I wasn't quite sure what to say or do so I just started speaking anything and everything I knew in Japanese. It got her attention and she quickly attend to my father by clearing out the obstruction in his breathing tube and the situation was under control. Again, I was in a hospital at midnight with my wife who had been suffering from a high fever for almost a week. In the moments before heading to the hospital she began to lose feeling in the right half of her body, and I immediately starting thinking...

*Be sure to read part I to get the whole picture. I once heard from a linguist professor, "Language is culture, and culture is language." They are intertwined so beautifully, like an intricate mandala spread out across the floor. Early humans viewed the world around them and constructed culture and language almost simultaneously based on what they valued, feared, and desired. What they valued, feared, and desired was largely impacted by their environment. If they lived in an area where natural disasters were prominent, then the language of that particular region would reflect that in a multitude of ways. Japanese is a language vastly different from English because it developed in a very different part of the world; a very simple conclusion, indeed. But what are the roots of this? I'd like to examine this below. *Please understand that this is not an academic paper, just an accumulation of many discussions I've had with friends and colleagues in conjunction with b...

This is a topic I have been pondering for quite some time and I'd like to break it up into a few posts. It is my hope that what I write will compel you, the reader, to venture beyond the comfort of your own world, be it your culture, neighborhood, family, etc. Not just for curiosity's sake but to dive deeper into places, dare I say, that will change the very core of your understanding of the world we live in. For me, Japan, its culture, people, and language have been that place, and I'd like to share that experience with you.  *As you've probably noticed by now, I'm not the best writer and I have surely lost whatever I learned in my college years having lived in Japan and spoken the language for as long as I have. If you bare with me for a while, maybe my writing will slowly make a come back.* This post has been on the back burner for years. I have made some attempts to start it but failed at each try, mostly because life either got way to insane to handle or...

Second edition release of my ESL book for intermediate learners. This release includes: -edits/revisions -a whole new look -nearly double the exercises, with over a 120 questions in total! 第一版をご購入いただいた方に、感謝の気持ちを込めて、第二版を出版いたします！ -全編見直しによる新改定 -デザインリニューアル -練習問題が約2倍の120問に

Great news for all you reading my blog in Japan, my book is now available in the newly established  Japan iBookstore. ESL: A Collection of Warm-Up Activities  is an interactive textbook complete with: -12 chapters containing some of the most commonly misunderstood grammar points -over 150 review questions -a complete glossary with over 100 example sentences -Interactive animations for all grammar points -explanations for ALL review questions -video, audio, and much more

It's been a while since my last post. I have been very busy with family related business and haven't had the time to post anything for a while, my apologies. But to be honest, I really don't write unless I have something to talk about. I see many bloggers that make a point to post every week, or even every day. But most of these blogs contain a whole ton of uninteresting posts because more than likely the authors are forcing themselves to write. As the saying goes, If you don't have anything to say, then don't say anything at all. A note of caution: I will be making some broad sweeping generalizations about Japanese only because it's what I hear every time I have a conversation with a Japanese about coffee. So if you are one of the few Japanese who knows what great coffee is, this is not directed towards you. For those of you who think I am smoking crack, go ahead and leave a comment, but I ask you be respectful. Without further ado~ Today's blog top...

     For those of you who haven't had a peek at my About page, I am from the U.S. of A., and my experience of bath taking is pretty much summed up in my embarrassing childhood photos; stark-naked playing with GI-Joes.       Bath taking is generally thought of as a kid's thing to do in the U.S. In fact, it's almost a right of passage to adulthood to graduate from the bath to the shower. Not to mention, having to take a bath with mom or dad isn't exactly a family bonding experience for a 12 year old.       This is why when I came to Japan taking a public bath (温泉) wasn't exactly a relaxing a moment in heaven for me. The prospect of having to take a bath completely naked with a bunch of other dudes I don't even know (without any GI-Joes, for that matter!) wasn't my cup of tea. Needless to say, I made the leap and entered my first public bath in a small resort town in Japan.       There was only one other...

Aside from all things Japan and Apple products, reading about and discussing politics are a few of my favorite pastime activities. I am passionate about politics but I am not the type to turn an ear away simply because you affiliate yourself with a specific party. I have my opinions of course, but generally speaking, I am very open-minded when it comes to political discussions. So with that, think of this as an open-minded discussion as you are welcome to comment on the issue as well, but please, be respectful. Healthcare is one of the hot topics in U.S. politics these days. Is it constitutional? This is the number question being asked right now. While I agree this is an important question, I think an equally important question that is not being asked is: How will a universal healthcare system fit into a country that takes pride in its individuality? The healthcare debate in the U.S. is much more about social issues than it is political, for the foundational arguments on both ...