Japan is a land haunted by many strange monsters and ghosts. Known collectively as Yokai (and Yurei. The two words are often used interchangeably, but for our purposes we will say that Yurei refer to human ghosts and Yokai to magical creatures of all sorts), these beings can range from the mischievous to the malevolent…
Year: 2015
Dusk Maiden of Amnesia
Do you believe in ghosts? Seikyou Private Academy is odd for a school. It’s winding halls end in abrupt dead ends. There are stairs that go no where. One wing of the school, the oldest, is used for storage and is seldom visited. Ghost stories abound about that wing. The stories all share a name:…
Kill la Kill: A Masterful Subversion of Fan Service
Kill la Kill, at first glance, looks like one of those shows designed for horny teen boys by a horny teen boy. Nearly naked women battle each other for the pleasure of male onlookers. Only Kill la Kill has far more to it than that. I will be honest. At first watch, this anime made…
The Art of Blogging – How to Blog Well
There are countless blogs about blogging. In fact, it seems more people blog about blogging than they blog about anything else. So what can I add to the mess? I already wrote an article about anime blogging and an article about copyright considerations. So what more is there to add? Oh, there is much more…
Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan
Japan and the United States share a unique relationship on the global stage. This site has covered some historical aspects of that relationship, from the post war reconstruction of Japan that bred a work culture resulting in the phenomenon of karoshi to the infamous kamikazes of World War II and how they came to be…
The White Hare of Inaba
Long, long ago, when all the animals could talk, there lived in the province of Inaba in Japan, a little white hare. His home was on the island of Oki, and just across the sea was the mainland of Inaba. Now the hare wanted very much to cross over to Inaba. Day after day he…