One of my all-time favorite Japanese movies is “Be with you” or [いま、会いにゆきます] (ima ai ni yukimasu) in Japanese. It’s a heartwarming love story that came out in 2004 and, unfortunately, isn’t widely recognized outside of Japan, China, and Korea. In my opinion, it’s a hidden gem of Japanese cinema that’s definitely worth watching.
Month: September 2015
itasha 痛車: Embarrassing Cars in Japan
Japan has a unique and varied car industry. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t find weird cars in Japan. There’s a word in Japanese called “痛車” (itasha) which is the combination of “pain” and “car” to equal “painful car”.
The car itself isn’t painful, but it is painful to look at or makes you cringe in embarrassment. Personally, out of all the things people do to stand out to make their car attract attention, I don’t really mind this compared to people who play their music too loud. Regardless, let’s see what’s the deal with these “itasha” cars.
Japanese Graded Readers Review: Enjoy reading more

Let’s face it, textbooks about people named Mary or Takeshi are boring. Most people will get bored learning from the same resource, especially with reading practice. Reading is not always fun, especially with dry textbooks. That’s why I want to talk about Japanese Graded Readers and why they are a fun, refreshing way to practice Japanese reading.
My Sega Dreamcast Retrospective
This is my Dreamcast Retrospective where I remember the system itself and the games released for it. I first heard about the Dreamcast when it was first announced for Japan by reading gaming news sites in 1998. At the time, Sega’s official site was bare, with only an online forum where people could post and meet other Sega fans. I signed up in 1998 and read threads of people saying how fantastic the Dreamcast would be and everyone couldn’t wait for the US release.
JLPT July 2015 Results
The results for the JLPT July 2015 have been announced online. I took the N1 in December 2014 and July 2015. Long story short, I didn’t pass. However, I didn’t miss passing by too much, so let’s look at my score compared to the previous test and see how I improved and what I need to do for the future.