Category: Japan

  • Lutheran Karaoke

    karaoke |ˌkarēˈōkē| noun a form of entertainment, offered typically by bars and clubs, in which people take turns singing popular songs into a microphone over prerecorded backing tracks. ORIGIN 1970s: from Japanese, literally ‘empty orchestra.’ To add to the general festivities at year’s end, Prof. Yang sent his minions off on a Friday afternoon, at […]

  • Racial Profiling

    [mouse click a photo to enlarge it] My efforts at racial profiling began when a Chinese friend, who like many Chinese still harbor a great grudge against the Japanese, not only on account of Japanese brutality during their aggression into China beginning in 1937, but because of the continuing Japanese denial and historical revisionism…. Anyway, […]

  • Musical Magnetism

    Still Minatures [mouse click on a photo to enlarge it] Tomoko Ando and Yukiko Hayashi live in Chiba City, across the bay from Tokyo, a locale that the Lonely Planet Japan guide dismisses as being of no particular interest. Perhaps not in terms of shines, temples or beautiful volcanic cones. But music has a powerful […]

  • Sake Socialism

    [mouse click on a photo to enlarge it] If you are fortunate, as I am, to have a friend and former scientific colleague willing to show you the sights in Tokyo, I suggest allotting equal time to some quiet, far-from-Ginza sashimi bar as to the glitz itself. Perhaps it was the sake more than the […]