Like zillions of people, I'm a big fan of Pharyngula. It's a blog by scientist and outspoken atheist P.Z. Myers, straddling both science and (ir)rationality as its topics.

What do witty, learned discussions of science and religion have to do with Home Japan, a lowly blog about cultural matters? The big item in common: critical thinking. Skepticism and rationality, if you will – the best tools we have for clearing away preconceptions and errors and what not, and getting at the reality. I'm simply trying to take those same approaches and tools into cultural comparison, a field I feel they've had little contact with.  read more »

I'll dip again into my bag of old newspaper clippings. This one is from the October 10, 1994 issue of The Japan Times, in the Nihongo and I column: "Language change inevitable", a discussion with Professor Kikuo Nomoto, former director of the National Language Research Institute.  read more »

Follwing up on the last post, I ran across yet another online stab at "the world's most difficult language".

http://allphilosophy.com/topic/show/1483

The writer ends with a neutral "every language has something difficult", though he does menton Japanese in passing:  read more »

What's the most difficult language to learn?

It's a good question, and an extremely difficult one to field.

What's the most uninformed response you could give to the above question?

That one's not so difficult; I've got the answer right here!  read more »

The latest JIN Newsletter discusses the high-tech toilets made by Japanese companies like TOTO. All fine and good, except for one comment stumbling into culturology:

It is ironic that Japan, that imported the very concept of sit-down toilets from the West, is now at the center of cutting edge lavatory technology.  read more »

Sorting through more old newspaper clippings, I find an interview ("Helping creative talent to bloom", Japan Times, November 03, 1991) with an art exhibition organizer, Kazuko Koike, who speaks about the 1991 Umbrellas environmental art project by Christo that placed hundreds of huge umbrellas throughout valleys in California and Japan.  read more »

I have an old clipping from Letters to the Editor (Japan Times, February 04, 1995), in which reader Kazuya Izaku of Saitama Pref. displays an all-too-rare sensibility on the matter of "Japanese" actions in the wake of the terrible Kobe earthquake. Here's an excerpt:

From the terrible tragedy of the Kobe earthquake, at least one piece of good news has emerged: Individualism in Japan is alive and well.  read more »

So while I was recently checking a few random stories on The Japan Times, I also spied the following:

How do you feel about the Narita incident and "guinea pig" foreigners?

This is one of those "ask people in the street" polls; the topic refers to instances of police unfairly targeting foreigners as targets for random security checks, placement of drugs in passengers' luggage for airport security tests, etc.  read more »

I don't often check The Japan Times online or off, but happened to load it up today on the screen. (Actually, I was curious about news of the iPhone's appearance in Japan.)  read more »

As in last time's Commenting on "10 Reasons Japan Is Better Than America", here I comment on a post on the Hunter Nuttall website: 10 Reasons America Is Better Than Japan.  read more »