Expat Magazines

For foreigners living in Japan there are a handful of English-language listings magazines, all of which have online incarnations. The most highbrow of these publications is Kansai Time Out, which has the most focus on culture and history. It’s also the only Japanese expat magazine that isn’t free, and this used to be reflected by the website. Their old site was dull and uninspired (presumably to encourage people to shell out for the magazine version) but after a redesign it’s looking much better, and the Kansai Guide is a useful reference section. There’re still only a couple of articles from each month’s magazine on the site though, so if you want to read everything you’ll have to go to your local bookstore and cough up ¥300. The listings are quite comprehensive (though the Kansai Clubs section is disappointing), while my favourite regular features include Jitsu Wa trivia, Diskoveries movies and the Infotech/Insites section.
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Overrated hamburgers and Japan’s answer to the Soup Nazi

The Soup Nazi is a memorable Seinfeld episode about a soup restaurant with a reputation for delicious soups whose owner has a fiery temper. Nicknamed ‘the Soup Nazi’ because of the excessively strict rules he imposes on his customers, the owner character was based on Al Yeganeh, a real life New York restaurant owner who was feared by people who came to eat his excellent soups. This episode highlights the paradox that if a restaurant’s food has a great reputation then people will eat there regardless of the service they receive, something I witnessed first hand when I visited Sasebo last month.

The Restaurant
Located near Nagasaki, Sasebo is home to a large US Navy base and this has resulted in a proliferation of hamburger restaurants in the city. Arguably the most famous of these is the Log Kit　(website now offline), its popularity reflected by the number of cars parked outside and the line of people waiting outside. Doubtless this fame can be attributed to the restaurant having been featured on TV along with its female owner, Nobuyo Maruta – ‘the Sasebo Burger Nazi’.
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Translation coming soon.

An interesting addition to Fukuoka’s nightlife

Among the many things foreigners find surprising when they first come to Japan is the country’s lax attitude towards alcohol. This includes 24 hour availability of alcohol in convenience stores, no laws against drinking on the street or public urination, and a (more…)

この記事の日本語版はこちらをご覧下さい
The introduction to this series of articles can be found here

Definition: Mentalist (noun) A person who engages in strange or crazy behaviour; Mentalist (adjective) strange or crazy

Example sentence: “I’ll never go to the Log Kit Hamburger Restaurant in Sasebo ever again. I had to wait an eternity for my food, the hamburgers were average and the owner is a total mentalist”

Explanation: Unlike most of the expressions on the My Favourite Slang list – which have no direct translation or widely known equivalent in Japanese language – ‘mentalist’ is basically the same as the word henjin in Japanese, meaning a ‘strange or crazy person’. There are actually numerous ways to convey this idea in English, varying in intensity from ‘eccentric’ to ‘weirdo’ to ‘freak’; ‘Mentalist’ falls somewhere between ‘weirdo’ and ‘freak’, ranging from mildly derogatory to mildly offensive depending on the context it’s used in.
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The English version of this article can be found here

定義: Mentalist (名詞)　行動が妙で、いかれてる人; Mentalist (形容詞)　変な、いかれた　

例文： 「もう絶対佐世保のLog Kit Hamburgerになんか行くもんか。注文してからありえないくらい待たされたし、やっと出てきたハンバーガーだって別に特別おいしい訳でもなかったし、それに、店長が完璧Mentalistだったしね」

説明： My Favorite Slangの中の他の表現－ぴったりする直訳が日本語にないもの－とは違って－’Mentalist’は日本語でいう“変人”とほとんど同じ。頭のいかれた変な人っていう意味。英語では、これと同じ意味の単語がいっぱいあって、意味の強さ順に’eccentric’から’weirdo’とか’freak’まで色々ある。’Mentalist’は大体’weirdo’と’freak’の間くらいで、言い方や、その時の内容によって、ただからかってるだけの軽い意味の時もあるし、結構きつい言い方になったりもする。
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Never Too Old For Harajuku

Previous Photo of the Month photos have all been places or things so I thought it was about time I included some people. This guy I met in Harajuku kept shouting “kingyo” (”goldfish”) - I didn’t know why until I looked more closely at his unusual hat and saw two live fish.

Check out these other unusual photos - the vomit bar, samurai Colonel Sanders, the claw machine with live lobster prizes and the ‘ultra big’ condoms’.