Remebering the Kanji – An Introduction to the Heisig Method

Recently, the I Heart Japan staff has started its long journey towards learning to read Japanese. We’ve already pretty much mastered the hiragana and katakana of Japanese writing, but we’ve been holding back starting on the dreaded kanji.

Kanji is the Chinese character written form of Japanese and it is said to contain over 100,000 characters. Sounds like an easy task, eh?
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Now Available – T-Shirts

That’s right, I Heart Japan has put together some fun and wacky Japanese T-Shirts.

Choose from “I have no idea what this says”, “I only pretend to like sushi”, and “Danger Gaijin”.

Check out the store!

More Funny Japanese Commercials

It’s that time again at I Heart Japan. More wild and wacky Japanese commercials.

Here’s a few old and new ones that are sure to leave you laughing, or at very least scratching your head.
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Cute Things from Japan – Japanese Food

I find Japanese food to be so interesting. It so different from anything I’ve ever eaten, even Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese seem quite different. So it is always interesting to see what is a common Japanese dish or what to order in restaurants. And as is so often the case, their food can be adorable!
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Top 5 Japanese Gardens

The Japanese take their gardening and landscaping very seriously. You may be surprised at first when you discover that what you thought was a bird up in a tree is really a coverall clad Japanese gardener working on shaping and lovingly pruning the tree.

There are so many beautiful gardens to see in Japan that it’s hard to trim it down to the must-see. But we’ve tried our best. So here we go with our top five gardens in Japan.
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Cute Japanese Style

We love Japan for many reasons, but cute is a big one. They even dress cute. And there are many ways to dress cute. Everyone knows about gothloli – mixing French baroque with little girl knee highs, lots of pink and bows.
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Taking the Train in Japan – Part 3

I know what you’re thinking. When you look at the train map above your pulse starts to quicken; your breath comes in raspy gasps; you feel yourself getting faint. No worries. That’s normal when you look at a Japanese Train map for the first time.

The good news is that with a few simple tips you’ll be purchasing train tickets from a vending machine like a pro.
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Taking the Train in Japan – Part 2

In Part 1 of our complete guide to travel travel in Japan we took a look at the different classes of trains, in Part 2 we’re going to brave the unknown by looking at how to actually purchase your ticket.
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Cute Things from Japan – Paper Crafts

The Japanese are whizzes with paper. Chiyogami for paper crafts; Shojigami for housing fittings; Karakami for sliding panels, clothing and waterproofed raincoats. And they continue to see it as a useful and playful item. Canon is perfect example of that. Look at the brilliant things they have come up with, just with paper and a printer.

I was amazed. I just had to see this card and I was blown away! I had never seen something this wonderful just offered for free with patterns, as if we could all just do it. I have yet to give it a go, I’m a bit nervous it won’t turn out as good as I want it to. And look at this one.

And that is just a drop in the bucket of what they offer. They offer toys that move, that you can make! You can build yourself the Taj Mahal! There is stuff for scrapbookers, art, and all different styles of calendars. You can spend a lot of time, just checking out all the amazing stuff they offer…..free!

My plan is to have my nephew over and build some type of bulldozer or crane or something. It’s going to be a fun way for us to spend time together.

Taking the Train in Japan – Part 1

We’re off the train and back in the office, and as promised, here is our first installment in our complete guide of train travel in Japan.

As I’ve mentioned before, train travel is an extremely efficient way to travel through Japan, and chances are you’re going to be hopping on at least one train in your visit to Japan. But while train travel is efficient, it’s not always going to be easy figuring out how to get from point A to point B. Toss in a foreign language and you have a recipe for confusion.
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