Okay, the title of this article is a bit misleading. Samurai didn’t date as we do; they had arranged marriages. But there are many stories of samurai romances and dating in Japanese folklore. Although samurai were warriors, until the Edo period, they were expected to balance their war-skills with softer skills like flower arranging and…
Category: Otaku Culture
Kokuhaku, How to Confess Your Love the Japanese Way
Kokuhaku, or love confession, isn’t easy to research. People take contemporary cultural practices for granted; such practices aren’t studied until they fall out of practice. If you do a web search for kokuhaku, you will find many articles, but I aim for academic or newspaper sources. These are scarce. In any case, like so many…
Be Curious Beyond Anime
You need hobbies beyond anime. It sounds obvious. However, I’ve encountered many people who are consumed by their interest whether it is anime or, more common to my area, sports. These people have few interests outside their field and those few interests link back to that field. Growing up, I idolized Leonardo da Vinci and…
How Can I Invest in Anime and Manga?
So, you want to learn how to invest your money in anime and manga and other Japanese companies? Why would you want to? If you live in the US, investing in these companies isn’t as easy as popping onto a stock trading platform and clicking buy. In fact, most publicly traded anime, manga, and Japanese…
Search Engine Changes and You
Microsoft and Google work to fold their Large Language Models, better known as ChatGPT (Bing version) and Bard respectively, into their search engines. What does this mean? For users, answers can become more immediate. For writers, less traffic. People don’t click beyond the first page of search results in most cases. Considering this well-known behavior,…
Otaku USA, the physical anime and manga magazine
Physical magazines have increasingly been going extinct. As far as I know, Otaku USA is the last-standing physical magazine that covers anime and manga in the US. At my library, the children’s department uses the magazine to help their manga ordering. The magazine reviews manga, anime, and video games as they release here in the…