Shortly after arriving in Japan, a visitor finds a camera from an older era lying on the ground. Via that camera, we get a different look at some familiar features of the sprawling city known as Tokyo.
Category: Japanese Culture
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How I know I’m in Japan
When you’re in Japan, it’s the little things the remind you of just how different this country can be sometimes.
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Shin Megami Tensei: Persona
In 1988, I played a relatively unknown Master System RPG titled Phantasy Star, and it forever changed me as a fan of video games. Then, eight years later, another Japan-born role-playing romp would come along and leave an equally impactful mark on my life; the similarly obscure Atlus release Revelations: Persona.
Phantasy Star taught me that I loved JRPGs; Persona taught me what I wanted from them.
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Kenka Bancho: Badass Rumble
Yankii (or, depending on how you romanize it, “yankee”): A slang term sometimes used for Americans outside of the States, and people from the Northern U.S. by, well, us Yankees. It has also, however, come to be a nickname for delinquent youth in Japan, specifically those that skip school, get in fights, don’t care about social norms, and do such unspeakable things as dying their hair to a color other than black.
What is it about this lifestyle that is so interesting, and at times almost romanticized, as we might do here in the West with the “greaser” subculture from the 1950’s? Whatever it is, there’s no denying it: the life of a yankii is a whirlwind of adventure and excitement.
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