As part of Japan’s efforts to grapple with its massive public debt, the JET (Japan Exchange & Teaching) Program may be cut. Soon after coming into power, the new  government launched a high profile effort to expose and cut wasteful spending. In May 2010, the JET Program and CLAIR came up for review, and during [...]

Nippon Club June 26, 2010 Keynote speech by playwright and JET alum Randall David Cook

『吾輩は猫である』 Cat + Keytar = Catar (sounds like Qatar, the country in the Middle East)

TranslationParty.com is a simple and amusing procrastination tool that demonstrates the hilarious quirkiness of machine translation. Enter an English phrase and TranslationParty will automatically translate it into Japanese, then back into English, then back into Japanese, etc. Until a Zen-like equilibrium is reached… From Twitter via @myGengo.

Today, I went to see The Cove, a documentary centering around the annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan.  As some reviewers have already said, the movie marries spy-thriller suspense with compelling investigative storytelling.  Because of the Japanese government and whaling interests not wanting the story to get out, the filmmakers had to secretly (and perhaps [...]