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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 Japanese spring foods【Well-Fed Top Five】
Some spring foods are a little… different in Japan. For the past two seasons we’ve taken a look at what autumn and winter have to offer food-wise in Japan. And now that spring has sprung, it’s time...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 confusing Japanese Internet slang words 【Weird Top Five】
Five words just as hard to figure out as kanji. The Internet has a language of its own. Words like LOL and WTF are common enough that even our grandparents know them, but others like TL;DR (“too long;...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 nicest sounds in Japan【Weird Top Five】
Sounds that you just want to close your eyes and savor. A few months ago we looked at the top five most annoying sounds in Japan, but now it’s time to look at the more pleasant side of the sound wave:...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 hardest Japanese habits to break 【Weird Top Five】
After living in Japan for a while, chances are you’ll be handcuffed to these new habits. If you’ve spent time in Japan, then you may have noticed that your friends and family look at you a little...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 most confusing Japanese compound words【Weird Top Five】
What happens when you put the kanji for “skin” and “meat” together? Uh, not what you think. Human languages make no sense. Sure, academics and grammarians have striven for centuries to try and force a...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 odd ways Japanese people beat the summer heat【Weird Top...
Try some of these out the next time you need to cool off. Summer in Japan can be brutal. High temperatures combined with high humidity can make you not want to leave the confines of your...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 Japanese foods for people who don’t like seafood 【Weird...
There’s much more to Japanese food than just sushi and seafood. So I have a bit of a confession to make: I don’t actually like most Japanese food. Yes, yes, gasp away. Before I first came to Japan,...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 kanji with ironic meanings【Weird Top Five】
It would just be silly if the kanji for “strong” had “weak” in it… right? Honestly, considering most kanji were created thousands of years ago in an ancient Asian culture, it’s amazing how many of...
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W.T.F. Japan: One year anniversary special! Top 5 W.T.F. Japan articles...
Plus a special announcement about the W.T.F. series! Happy one year birthday, W.T.F. Japan! Wow, it seems like just yesterday we were counting down the top five unique Japanese toilet functions with...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 Japanese words with cool ancient origin stories【Weird Top...
Words about corrupt grocers and reading people’s minds? Sign me up! Finding out the origins of words is awesome. Whether they’re borrowings from other languages, cultural misunderstandings, or other...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 biggest Japanese food challenges【Weird Top Five】
Are you a bad enough dude to put these five things into your mouth? If you consider yourself an adventurous eater, then you’ve probably already eaten some of Japan’s most bizarre foods. Horse meat?...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 15 most disturbing Japanese prefecture mascots【Weird Top...
Because “top five” isn’t nearly enough to show off all these terrifying creations. Japan’s obsession with having mascots for everything is pretty well known throughout the world. Not only do companies...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 kanji used to represent foreign countries 【Weird Top Five】
“You use WHAT kanji for my country?!” The names for countries can vary wildly between languages. Even in English the names we have for some countries are incredibly different from what the natives...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 most famous pet dogs in Japan【Weird Top Five】
A country’s awesomeness is directly proportional to how many of its celebrities are dogs. It seems that anyone can become a celebrity online these days, even animals. In fact, with their positive...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 strangest Japanese home goods【Weird Top Five】
There’s something in this person’s kitchen and I don’t know what it is. One of the best kinds of culture shock has to be when you’re alone and suddenly encounter something, either in a store or...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 most difficult Japanese tongue twisters (with videos!)...
Even if you don’t speak Japanese, that might be to your advantage. In Japanese the word for “tongue twister” is hayakuchi kotoba, literally “fast mouth words.” I like how the Japanese version of the...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 confusing Japanese hand gestures【Weird Top Five】
Am I supposed to be insulted or flattered by that? Body language is almost as integral to speaking and understanding a language as the words themselves. As we saw before in top five hand gestures that...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 kanji with the longest readings 【Weird Top Five】
Some of these are so long they may require a friend to help say them. What exactly is a kanji reading anyway? If you’ve studied Japanese then you know that most kanji have at least two readings: the...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 “shikata ga nai” (“it can’t be helped”) situations in...
Things that “can’t be helped” in Japan, but are maybe a little different elsewhere in the world. One of my favorite Japanese phrases is shikata ga nai. Translated, it means “it can’t helped” and it’s...
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W.T.F. Japan: Top 5 best Tamagotchi releases 【Weird Top Five】
This May marks the 20th anniversary of Tamagotchi, so let’s take a look at the best that two decades have brought us! Ah Tamagotchis, the bane of school teachers everywhere in the late 90s. Back then...
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