Japan was in complete overhaul in the year 1889. The wounds of civil war were beginning to mend, the samurai system was abolished into history, and a new government sought to bring the country into a modern age. In that year, the Constitution of the Empire of Japan established the Meiji Government as the sole leader of the country and put the Empire of Japan on the map as a growing ...
The Japanese cities of Kyoto and Nara are often lauded for their history and culture by travelers worldwide. Both cities have gone to great extremes to preserve their heritage by maintaining ancient buildings, some of which are the most impressive wooden structures you’ll ever see. However, both cities remain popular with tourists also because of their convenience. Kyoto is a popular...
My trip to Akihabara this year left me more flatlined on the neighborhood than I’ve ever been before. As I’ve said many times before, I’ve never been impressed with this wildly overhyped otaku heaven and don’t feel that it lives up to its reputation in the least. Sure, there are a few nice stores and a fun arcade or two, but by and large, the area has become a tourist trap that...
My wife went on an extended vacation with her mother a few months back, and I was left to my own devices for a whole two weeks. I ultimately decided not to spend those two weeks exclusively with my electronic devices, and instead, I hit the road to one of my long-time wishlist destinations, the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum. Naturally, since it had been forever since I truly got to...
My Neighbor Totoro from Studio Ghibli, the makers of Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, is getting its own theme park. Studio Ghibli has partnered with the government of Nagoya’s Aichi Prefecture to design and build the park. It’s due to open in 2020. Japan will reuse the old grounds for Expo 2005, a 200-hectare space, to build the new My Neighbor Totoro park...
Sony is going to need a spiny shell at this point to catch up at this pace! Japanese research firm MediaCreates once again says that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has topped the best-selling video games list in Japan for the third week in a row, pushing the Nintendo Switch into the number 1 spot for hardware as well. Japan loves it some Mario Kart, but it’s also worth noting that Prey did quite...
Japanese games came back as a force to be reckoned with in 2016 as many classic franchises and studios caught up with modern technology. A decade of lagging behind their Western counterparts on the home console HD market was finally addressed with adjustments made across the board to development cycles and corporate structure within the biggest publishers on the market. Square Enix...
Japanese Nintendo Switch cases are already on the shelves in retail stores, and the public can now check out what each games’ packaging will look like leading up into pre-orders and launch. Twitter user Gaijinhunter, who often frequents Japan’s video game stores, has uploaded groups of images showing off what the Switch game cases will look like. They are comparable in size to standard...
Final Fantasy XV has revived interest in the classic franchise all around the world, even in its home country of Japan. In its first week, the game sold an impressive 690,471 copies across the whole country, making it one of the biggest, if not the biggest, launch this console generation has seen yet. To put it in perspective, that’s a number bigger than Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom...
Let’s go visit another gem in Japan. This past weekend, I jumped in a car with a bunch of friends and drove up north into the mountainous Tottori Prefecture. It’s not the most famous of places in Japan, but it has a few things going for it like Japan’s largest sand dunes about ten minutes outside of its largest city. It also has the distinction as the lowest population among all of...