Contemporary Culture

It is difficult to say whether the wabori Japanese traditional tattoo (入れ墨） hurts more or less than the electric needle tattoo. Pain is like tickle, it is not a feeling…

May we all be healthy May we all be safe May we all be grateful for what we have May we all live well

One minute you feel as if you have accidentally walked into an apartment of a man with perverted interests, the next minute you feel as though you are visiting a…

Hello Kitty, yakuza working in the nuclear industry, coffee and cigarettes, 2012 was a year chock full of news. Here are some of our favorite stories we ran in 2012.

My favorite object of art was “Flight, Flee, Freeze.” Those are the three primary reactions we have to fear. There are objects of fear such as a spider and the…

There's a phenomenon in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence known as the "uncanny valley" hypothesis, which asserts that when computers and objects look or act very much like…

You see, the Japanese are sometimes called the world's great antiquarians. And they can trace their own tradition of Buddhist sculpture back to Bamiyan. So they --like many people-- find…

Mayan prophecy moves on Mayan time. Even an 8 year old boy knows this. And an 8 year old boy also knows that not even the end of the world*…

Chapter 12: "We Ran It In A Different Way" is a must for anyone interested in the shadow history of Japan. It details how in post-war Japan, the CIA, using…

The final thing you have to consider, is the way Japanese debt is structured. On the face of it, the country has a debt 195% of their GBP. Meaning the…