In Japan there are mascot characters everywhere and people love cute stuff. There are even condoms who became cute mascot characters!

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Japanese is a language with tons of homophone words. Having many homophones makes it easier to write poems, jokes and tongue-twisters than using other languages. Tong-twisters (早口言葉) are easy to create but some of them are extremely difficult to pronounce without twisting your tongue
If you are learning Japanese these are some basic 早口言葉:

バスガス爆発（ばすがすばくはつ）(basu [...]

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Toyota is the dream company where Japanese engineers want to work. The next most desired companies are Honda, Panasonic, Nintendo and Canon. Sony and Canon lost positions compared with last year. On the other hand Nissan moved from the 20th to the 9th position and NEC from the 29th to the 10th!

Companies ranked by Japanese [...]

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In Japan you can rent manga in some places, for example in some Tsutaya shops. It is interesting the Tsutaya strategy, they showcase manga in shelves looking like DVDs. Look at the pictures, it looks like it is all full of rental DVDs but it is not, it is manga!

One volume, three days (70 yen). [...]

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It seems somebody LOST a parrot in Tokyo.

For a moment I thought I was walking around Mêlée island in Monkey Island instead of Tokyo.

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A Nissan GTR racing against a Japanese Bullet Train (Shinkansen). Well, it is not exactly like that, it is a race between a GTR and doing the same route with public transportt. Usually in Japan you arrive almost everywhere faster using trains and not cars.
I found very interesting the video because it shows the rural [...]

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I love this Tokyo time lapse video, is one of my all time faves in Youtube.

Video created by Myles.

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Japan Probe - Japan news and entertainment (Subscribe)

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Last month was the second time I have spent the end of the year in Japan (The other years I traveled overseas), and my conclusion is that nothing really “exciting” happens in Japan during the end or the beginning of the year. Celebrations are pretty calm and traditional. The common pattern I found with Europe [...]

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I spent a week in Okinawa and I had the opportunity to drive around the main island, I realized how little it is but also I realized how most of the territory is still owned by the US. Okinawa was officially US land until 1972 when it was returned to Japan, but until now they [...]

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Seen in Miyajima.

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