Last December as a company perk and to improve communication within the TheJapanShop.com team, I decided to buy all employees (that is, myself and Pam, my sister) an iPhone. Having succumbed to all the hype, we came up with good rationalizations why such a purchase would be necessary. All the way to the [...]

While thumbing through the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, I found out Kilobyte should be abbreviated as KB. I had always preferred Kb (with a lowercase ‘b’) just because ‘KB’ seemed like an abbreviated ‘KGB’ abbreviation.
However, according to Oxford, ‘Kb’ stands for Kilobit (1,024 bits) and ‘KB’ is Kilobyte (1,024 bytes). [...]

“Yumi,” I said the other day, “look at the Hanafubuki.” Our dogwood tree was dropping its pinky white flowers resembling the Japanese ‘hanafubuki‘ of the sakura cherry tree blossoms.
She said in disgust, “I can no longer enjoy flowers showering down after how you say hanafubuki before blowing your nose.”
It has become something of a [...]

For reasons I don’t want to go into, we had to buy a new server (this week) to replace the new server (last week) for TheJapanesePage.com. Turns out the memory was too low to support our needs. Instead of 1and1 saying, “Sure Clay, I’ll just stick a couple of gigs in there for [...]

On the pleasant scale of 1-10, it’s not good.
I’ve had what’s called Post-Nasal Drip for some time. It means waking up sometimes coughing or not being able to breathe well. Recently, it hasn’t been very bad, but after a friend got his Snot Pot, I thought I’d give it a shot.
It seems to [...]

I have a ton of TJP work to do with the new server (we are right in the middle of moving theJapanesePage.com to the new server and CMS), but I had to post this.
This morning, I took my parents-in-law to the airport.  This morning means 2 AM.  We got there around 3:45AM and waited for [...]

Yumi’s parents arrived safely, but her father’s laptop did not.
Apparently it got lost during the confusion of the security check just before boarding the flight to Florida. I’ve been on the phone with this-or-that airline and this-or-that Lost and Found and this-or-that TSA, but so far, nothing. The sad thing is, the laptop [...]

I have an idea for a video that will give the names for each of the fingers. In English we have Thumb · Index · Middle · Ring · Little.
Japanese is no exception. The most interesting name is for the Ring finger—薬指 kusuri yubi Medicine Finger.  More on this later.
Incidentally, I just received an [...]

NHK, ever the serious type, has started a new fad among children (and adults who can’t get the song out of their head): おしりかじり虫 oshiri kajiri mushi Butt Biting Bug.
Well, just watch it for yourself:

The bugs were out and singing with a lot of children on Kouhaku the other night. Interesting.

When I started this blog a year ago, I predicted the category “くだらない Thoughts” (Stupid / Worthless Thoughts) would led the pack in number of posts.
It was close. I had 43 くだらない Thoughts this year (this post being #43), but 71 posts in the catch-all “Japanese” category.  I suppose this means I was [...]