Pop Culture

Japan kept making cell-phone that weren’t compatible with the rest of the world and only worked well within the confines of Japan. The development of Japanese cell-phone and mobile technology…

“People’s clothing are the ‘social symbols’ which allows other people to understand whether he/she is a Buddhist monk, a Christian priest, a salary man, or a medical doctor. Therefore the…

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…

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…

"The name is Bond. Japan Bond." Shinzo Abe returns as the economic death-dealing agent .007 in a new action thriller that has all the economists shaking. Will he be able…

In contrast to the Nakayama store, which is almost a Sony graveyard, at the Sony Building, located in Ginza--once the most expensive and luxurious area in Tokyo-- the Sony Show…

It's the story of Sorato, a high school student who's deceased father was a sculptor of Buddhist images (仏師/busshi）and seems to have passed his unusual talent on to poor Sorato-kun.…