You can’t avoid death or taxes, and if you are an American citizen or recognized alien, you can’t avoid reporting your Japanese bank accounts to the American government. Under the United States tax system...
Episode 15 of the AmaoJapan podcast is now available. As with other episodes, this one reviews the day’s news as found on the Yahoo! Japan ニュース web site and other sources.
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They say that humans spend one-third of their lives in bed. But recently, I’ve spent nearly that same amount of time just trying to figure out which size of bedsheets to buy. I never struggled that much with sheets in...
I read a lot of children’s books. It’s not by choice, I assure you. But given my current Japanese language level, books with simpler grammar and limited word choice seem to work out better. Therefore, when it came time...
A long time ago, on an island nation far, far away, there lived a hunter-gatherer civilization known as the Jōmon (縄文). Well, it was not really that far away since it happened right here on the Japan archipelago. And it...
Today is January 1, and I already can’t figure out what is happening. That’s because I bought a 日めくりカレンダー (himekuri karendaa), one of those nifty Japanese page-a-day calendars. As a basic date tool, it gets the job...
Before she moved back to America and took a job at my elementary school, my third-grade teacher had spent the prior two decades living in Japan. She loved to share with her students some of the distinctives of Japanese...
I celebrated my first Christmas in Japan one year ago, and it was obvious right from November 1—the official start of the Christmas decorating season—that things were going to be different from the American version. For...
Today is tōji (冬至), the winter solstice and the official start of the winter season. Despite that strict demarcation on the calendar, eastern Japan got an early start this year on a record-setting snow season. A recent...
I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve passed an eye test before. Sure, the questions were not that difficult: “What letter do you see?” or, “Which way is the ‘E’ pointing?” But what happens when the chart doesn’t have any...
Tim Patrick
