DISQUS

Koichi,

What articles do you read every day to practice Japanese? I find newspapers a bit too difficult, but as a third-year student I probably should push myself for that.

Ideas?

I feel the exact same way about this. I've been studying for about 2.5 years now and I def. feel like I've hit a plateau with my conversation. However, I've found a few tools recently that have really helped. One is Sharedtalk.com; a great resource for language exchange. After you sign up (it's free!) you can go in large community chatrooms or privately message people and talk to them that way. I've met a bunch of people through the service and now we talk on Skype occasionally. Check it out!

Wow. Just...wow.

It's nice to see how "sexually open" a society can be, but there's a fine fine line between "donation" and "prostitution". Also,the whole おっぱい募金 thing seems a BIT sexist. I mean would it ever ever happen the other way around, with girls paying to "grab" a random guy. DEF. NOT.

NONE of my friends here in the states understand what a big part vending machines play in the lives of the Japanese. If you are going to have a TON of vending machines all around a city, you have to do it right, and the Japanese really do. I don't know HOW many times I was walking around Tokyo and though "I really want a slimming green tea with antioxidants" and lo and behold, a vending machine would pop up right in front of me. Genius.

Now, those vending machines with iPods that I 've seen in Tokyo may be taking it a BIT too far, but wow, the US could really learn something here.

Here's the thing. I wonder how Japan's supposed most "unattractive" town to America's most "unattractive" town. I would imagine that we would have them beat by miles. There's some stuff that we have here that you just don't see in Japan (i.e. women in oversized Mickey Mouse t-shirts and tights).

No offense to the Midwest, or anything...