These are the top ten popular posts for April 2008!

Japanese Sports Wives: More Than Just Trophies
There’s a lot of noise regarding Hideki Matsui’s marriage, which is very atypical of most sports marriages in Japan. Normally a sports celebrity marries someone in the entertainment or news industry to increase PR–in other words, make them look good. […]

I’ve seen these before (and dog cafes, too), but reading this article makes me want others to know about this bizarre and adorable service.
Cat cafes are establishments where you can go in, pay an hourly fee, and spend quality time with cats while relaxing. You basically have all the best parts of having a […]

Click the pictures above for their respective product pages and more pictures.
These chocolate-themed Nintendo DS cases came out this week, and it makes me want a Nintendo DS. Like a lot. But I can’t justify spending money on a gaming apparatus and accessories when I have no time to devote to playing […]

Really, does this surprise anybody anymore?
A pack of beef, imported for the major Japanese restaurant chain Yoshinoya from the Californian plant of National Beef, contained spinal tissue, the agriculture ministry said.
Japan in July 2006 agreed to resume US beef imports on condition the cattle were not more than 20 months old at the time of […]

(Well, I’m a little late but I still wanted to write about Earth Day, so deal)
There are a lot of interesting reads on the ‘net regarding this special occasion, and here are some worth checking out:
50 Ways to Save This Planet is simple, to the point, and beautifully designed.  It features 50 green ideas in […]

Because of the nature of this site, it gets hard to blog about every little article that I want to share without it seeming irrelevant to stuff that I’ve been focusing on lately (namely, Japanese news and culture.) So I’m going to occasionally make a post featuring interesting reads from other blogs that I […]

Leda by ’skine.art member szazz
What? You enjoy sketching AND you have a moleskine? Who would’ve thought the two could ever cross paths? (I kid.) Most artists, with the right amount of office supply enthusiasm, know that a moleskine = awesome art. Why? Because moleskine sketchbooks are crafted simply and […]

So apparently there was an episode of Oprah’s talk show that discussed the progress of women’s self-image in numerous countries, including the States, Mexico, Great Britain, France, and other such countries.
And then there was Korea.
While the other countries talked about positive aspects as well as concerns about body image, Korea was most specifically pointed out […]

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I am so glad I was able to find a video of this ridiculous competition, in which four women competed to see who could eat the most okonomiyaki. I saw this on TV and was completely mesmerized.
For those unfamiliar, okonomiyaki is a Kansai dish […]

“Do you think we are going to supply you with a translator all of your life?” the judge asked them.
If you had the option of going to jail for two years or learning a second language, what would you do? Such was the proposition that three Spanish-speaking men faced when arrested for accosting two […]