My good friend Mike, who’s lived on Okinawa for decades, has a theory! It goes that whenever the Okinawan’s plan a party, the weather will hold off for as long as the event is scheduled for. Now by party, I mean festivals. Okinawa could easily be described as the island of festivals cause no matter when, every weekend when you look in the paper you’re bound to find some kind of celebration going on somewhere. (more…)

If you live in Japan or planning to visit, make sure you occasionally look down otherwise you might miss something beautiful. Japan is big on art and you can find several paintings and sculptures in every city. There is one form of art that a lot of people miss, gaijin and Japanese alike.

I’ve lived in japan for almost 5 years and visited about 10 times in the last 13 years and until recently I always missed it. I’ve talked to several Japanese who’ve also never noticed. So what is this form of art that many people miss? (more…)

Welcome back friends, neighbors, and anyone with an Internet connection! By now you should know my name, but if this is your first time popping in, I’m Akie. I live here in Akita Prefecture, and this blog is all about Akita, what makes it great, and occasionally, if you are nice, I will share with you some secrets about what makes the renown Akita beautiful ladies – bijin – so beautiful. But if you don’t want to wait, check out my past blogs and you’ll learn all about me and Akita, and most certainly, everything bijin…..but don’t forget, a girl has to have some secrets, you know!

This time of year our dinner tables are overflowing with an abundance of food from the fall harvest. Akita really brings in its fair share of food, and the really great thing is that quite a bit of it stays right here in Akita. We can really enjoy and appreciate the freshness of fall food. One of the many crops that we harvest up here is fruit. I just love fruit, don’t you? Akita has so much really great fruit, like- kaki (persimmons), nashi (pears), and budou (grapes). These are my yummy, yummy, yummy favorites!
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Japan Fashion Week wrapped up last week in Tokyo Midtown, the event passed a lot of people in the
international press by, but Tokyo still remains the place where H&M, Forever 21 and a host of other
major brands battle for every last millimeter of retail space.  We took the chance to find out what
one of the professionals attending the event thought of it and where they get their inspiration from while in Tokyo.

Japan Fashion Week on GaijinPot.

So what does Japan fashion mean for you and where does your fashion inspiration come from?
Leave your thoughts below and check the In Japan section for more on shopping in Japan.

As a hostess (and the only foreigner) at one very highly respected club in Kitashinchi, Osaka’s hostess club hotspot in Umeda, I am fortunate to meet a lot of interesting people in my work. Some are nice and some are not but I have come to look at what I do as a chance to have a peek into a highly important part of Japanese culture: what the Japanese refer to as “entertainment”. Now, a lot of people get the wrong ideas about hostesses and I’m here to set the those people straight. First of all, hostesses do not sleep with their customers. That is what the soaplands are for, where a man can expect to pay anywhere from 30,000 yen to 50,000 yen for sex. (more…)

At my job, I get to meet a lot of people whom I would have never been able to meet otherwise. Guests who regularly go to high-end hostess clubs are often CEOs, VIPs, and other important people. Some of them are friendly to foreigners and others are not. I was surprised when I entered the hostess world of how many Japanese people are xenophobic, in other words, scared of foreign people or downright openly racist. I’ve found these racist feelings are toward both Westerners and people from other Asian countries. In fact, the UN even stated that Japan was one of the most racist countries in the world. (more…)

Japan has a long history of dealing with Mother Nature’s mood swings. From typhoons to earthquakes to tsunamis, its people have learned the importance of preparing for the worst. Foreigners who move here and wish to develop a similar sense of environmental awareness might want to dedicate an afternoon of their lives to roaming the Ikebukuro Bosaikan.

Even if you are fairly secure in your apocalyptic response capacity, this safety “museum” can be very entertaining if you go with the right crowd. The staff will guide you through various simulations of common emergency situations. For starters, you and your companions can sit around a table in the fake kitchen and role play the proper way to react when your whole world starts to shake. (more…)

Can’t you just taste that chill in the air?  Can’t you just feel that cold wind in your face?  Can’t you just see those changing colors of the leaves?  Yep! Fall is definitely here!

Hello everyone, it’s me, Akie here again!  I’m out at the Suishiin botanical garden here in Akita city, taking in all the changing leave’s colors, from green to red, yellow, orange, etc.  We Japanese call this kouyou.  We usually just talk about the red leaves changing, but I think all the different colors splashed across the landscape are so gorgeous and breath-taking, don’t you? Just like in the springtime when the Cherry Blossoms bloom, this time of year is special so you can find we Japanese moving all around our islands looking for the best spots to view the changing leaves. (more…)

Have you ever wandered the aisles of your local Japanese drug store chain wondering what most of the stuff is? Well, me too. And once I found out what some of it actually was, I had to laugh. But who really knows if these products work or not? It’s hard to say who will get the last laugh.

Wacky Beauty Product #1: Breast Enlarger Cookies (more…)