Fate/Zero has a completely different angle on the old quest for the Holy Grail. Every so often mages of talent are selected by the Holy Grail to battle for the right to use it. Each mage is granted a Servant: a hero from history. Each hero has a class much like in a video game….
Author: Chris Kincaid
Capsule Hotels
Space is precious and expensive in Japan’s dense cities. Enter the capsule hotel. These sleeping coffins maximize space. The idea came to Kurokaw Kisho back in the 1970s with a shipping container. Capsule hotels can stuff about 40 people into a single room. Each space tend to measure 2 meters long by 1 meter wide…
Babymetal, the Future of American Metal?
What happens when you take American heavy metal and infuse it with the kawaii saccharine of j-pop? Kawaii metal. At least, that is what the metal group Babymetal wants to create. Babymetal is a j-pop idol schoolgirl trio set against the demonic riffs and imaginary that defines metal. The outlandish whiplash mix reminds me of…
Shockwaves of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Rise of Manga and Monsters
August 6, 1945 marked a turning point in human history. August 9, 1945 left no doubt. Humanity had entered the Atomic Age. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagaska burned itself into the memories of the Japanese and the Americans. In many regards, the rise of the atomic bomb, and later the hydrogen bomb, gave…
Writing Japanese Katakana by Jim Gleeson
One of the keys to learning Japanese is stroke order and drilling until each stroke is second nature. Jim Gleeson put together a wonderful workbook that lets you do just that. In a short introduction, Gleeson outlines the different strokes needed to form each letter, and he briefly provides a history lesson about how kana…
Am I a Weeaboo? What does Weeaboo Mean Anyway?
My goal for JP is to cut through some of the mistaken ideas anime and manga fans have about Japan. As I dug around the net and academic databases researching for this article, I wondered if I really do meet my goal. Or, perhaps, I only add to the preponderances of misinformation and mistaken ideas…