M's Pop Life store even among the streets of Akihabara is a rarity – an appreciated rarity. On my trip to Tokyo I made it an important place to visit because of all the stuff I’d heard about. My gene…

posted by  ssj1236 | 7 years, 12 months ago | 1 comment

Last month, legislators in Japan passed a law that legalizes casino gambling in the country. It ended 15 years of political back-and-forth and paves the way for the eventual development of integrated…

posted by  banzaitokyo | 7 years, 12 months ago | 3 comments

I grew up eating bugs. When I would visit my grandparents in Yokohama, they used to offer me inago no tsukudani いなごの佃煮　　　　つくだに, rice grasshoppers cooked in soy sauce, as an afternoon snack. At first,…

posted by  banzaitokyo | 8 years ago | 1 comment

There are a ton of different types of maid cafes in Japan, catering to all sorts of tastes, ranging from Shangrila’s “plump” maids to Ita-Cafe’s uniformed Russian girls.

But what about people who’d …

posted by  Sergey | 8 years ago | 1 comment

Last couple of years have seen quite a few new types of treatment for hay fever. And some of those cure the problem forever.

posted by  banzaitokyo | 8 years ago | 1 comment

How many of you have read Harry Potter and wondered what it would feel like to have an owl as a pet? I know I certainly did, and thanks to Tokyoites’ obsession with animal cafés I got to find it out.…

posted by  banzaitokyo | 8 years ago | 1 comment

With statestics of last year's gun crimes and homicides rolling out in many countries, I saw this topic being discussed on a Japanese TV channel. In Japan, gun crime is basically low because guns are…

posted by  Yubi | 8 years ago | 0 comments

I know that Center shiken is an exam for university entrance and it is held in January. I also know that it is very likely to have heavy snow on that day :-p. Snow or no snow, this is mentioned in th…

posted by  Tanuki | 8 years ago | 1 comment

Since I live in the Pacific Ocean side of East Japan which was only affected mildly, we got only 20 minutes of snow. But then, the water taps outside are still frozen. All flower pots looked like the…

posted by  Tanuki | 8 years ago | 0 comments

Okinawa Prefecture is scrambling to plot its next move in the wake of a recent Supreme Court ruling siding with the central government's effort to relocate the operations of a U.S. military base with…

posted by  Tanuki | 8 years ago | 1 comment