Impressions of daily life in Japan
When living in Japan, you are constantly seeing funny English phrases everywhere. Many misunderstandings result from literally translating Japanese into English. Both languages have a totally different structure and many formal Japanese expressions have no English equivalent. If you speak a little Japanese, some of the strange English starts to make a lot more sense.... Continue Reading →
When we were driving around Kyoto, we saw the cutest little roadblocks. They were shaped like frogs. While Belgian roadblocks are just functional and boring looking, the Japanese never pass up an opportunity to make something look cute. We were surprised and fascinated to suddenly see these funny frog-roadblocks while entering Kyoto. In Japan you... Continue Reading →
Love hotels are abundant in Japan. This is largely due to the lack of privacy that is part of daily life in Japan. The walls of some appartements are paper-thin, multi-generational living is quite common and many people still pretend that they don't have sex before marriage. This implies that love hotels are by no... Continue Reading →
One sunny afternoon, while walking around Toyota City, I came across this little red IQ. The IQ is one of Toyota's smallest models. Of course you will always see plenty of Toyotas at any given time in Japan, since Toyota holds over 40% of the market share. But what drew my attention to this particular... Continue Reading →
Many Western hotels have a Bible in every room. I never quite understood why that was the case, so today I looked it up. Apparently the Bibles in hotel rooms are the work of an American society called 'Gideons International'. Their main objective is to provide Bibles free of charge. They are best known for... Continue Reading →
Japanese people are a lot more aware of the seasons than Belgian people are. While the first signs of spring are met with joy everywhere, Japanese culture takes it to another level by singling out a great number of tell-tale sings of spring that people can look for and rejoice about. Famous examples are the... Continue Reading →
The Japans 