BURA TORA

Bomb-ass Niigata Rice

August 08, 2018, Posted by : James

One luxury afforded the Japan resident is the opportunity to become a rice snob. An argument could certainly be made for the benefits of focusing one's snobbery on sake, or another rice-based alcohol, but I fancy myself a contrarian. For the last few years, i've been ordering nothing but 5 kg sacks of rice from a place called  辰巳屋米店 (Tatsumi-ya Kome-ten)  in Niigata. If you're ...

Making moves

June 12, 2018, Posted by : James

I was eating a family-sized tub of ice cream the other day, and it occurred to me that Japanese families eat less than I do as an individual. A brief sense of shame swept over me, but I continued, brazenly, with the delicious task at hand. How do people manage to keep eating stir-fry and miso soup when it's 99% humidity out and literally 95 degrees out? I pondered this whilst ...

Japan and IT

April 24, 2018, Posted by : James

Many people think that Japan is a high tech and hyper-modern society.

Those people are wrong.

Those people have probably never lived here, because those people are misguided.

If you see pictures of rock-a-billy dancers in Yoyogi park, crazy lolita outfits on girls in harajuku, and fish still moving ...

Finding a job in Japan

March 29, 2018, Posted by : James

It's sakura season in Tokyo this week. Colorful bunches of sakura flowers blossom on the trees, giving normally level-headed Tokyo-ites a reason to gather their friends for picnics and drinking at any park that isn't already overrun with people.

I had a proud tradition for the last 7 or 8 springs of going to several "hanami" parties, which literally means flower ...

Two men and a Kei-Tora

February 27, 2018, Posted by : James

I'm currently paying two rents. My new apartment and my previous hole-in-the-wall have leases that overlap by a month and a half. If there's one truth about modern Tokyo life that foreigners and Japanese alike can agree on - it's that housing in Japan is ridiculously expensive.

In my mind, I envision Japanese realtors as greedy little beady-eyed scam artists rubbing their tiny ...