The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide focuses on a childless couple who is adopted by the neighbor’s cat. The novella offers a detailed slice of life set in the late 1980s. It’s hard to believe that is over 30 years ago! The author isn’t familiar with cats, so Chibi’s antics surprise and delight him. Chibi doesn’t…
The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang
The Rape of Nanking covers the destruction of present-day Nanjing City by the Japanese during World War II. The book doesn’t hold back. In several chapters, I had to take a break from the relentless atrocities the author accounted. Nanking was the first area the Japanese went after taking Shanghai. The goal was to conquer…
No More Wars: the Edo Period’s Final Rebellions
After Japan was unified under Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and finished with Tokugawa Ieyasu, the Tokugawa government declared there would be no more wars. The final war is a two-part rebellion of Christian samurai, farmers, and other impoverished people. The second part of the rebellion remains the best remembered because of how it ended in…
Sugoi Summer – TokyoTreat Box Review
Ichigo, the parent company of SakuraCo and TokyoTreat, asked me to review a TokyoTreat box. If you aren’t familiar with TokyoTreat, it’s a monthly subscription service that sends you a curated box of candy and other goodies from Japan. Most of the goodies aren’t readily available elsewhere or, as is often the case, you didn’t…
The Nature of Online Piracy
You’ve most likely broken the law by downloading something illegally. In fact, more than an estimated 75% of computers have at least one illegally downloaded file, and 22% of Internet bandwidth is used for piracy (Petrescu, 2018). Scanlations and fan subs are common in the anime community. And yes, they are piracy. Online piracy is…
Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie
Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie addresses interesting themes. Let’s get to them! But first, the summary for those who haven’t seen the anime yet. Not Just a Cutie follows the high school relationship between a boy named Izumi Yuu, who is cursed with bad luck–as in things-fall-and-try-to-kill-him bad luck, and Shikimori, who is an assertive…