By Shelley Pallis. Masaaki Watanabe’s anime series Bartender is part of a long tradition of TV shows about smart loners who help others in secret. Its leading man is cut from the same cloth as many a medical maverick, discussed in the same tones of hushed admiration as the trouble-shooting physician Black Jack, as a […]
Jan 3, 2021 • Subscribe
More like this
Books: Japanese Cinema
By Jasper Sharp. There are many paths one might take through the vast and varied terrain of Japanese cinema. Peter Cowie’s addition to the ever-expanding range of publications…
Books: Branding Japanese Food
By Jonathan Clements. In 2013, the Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe took the remarkable step of appearing on YouTube to talk about Japanese food. He was addressing the…
Books on Japanese Culture and Society
This past semester I taught a class on Japanese science fiction and fantasy, and I was surprised by how interested my students were in learning more about the…
The Drinking Problem
(…no, I don’t mean I have one…) Meta context: This was pulled out of my draft folder, so…I don’t even […]
The Drinking Problem
(…no, I don’t mean I have one…)
Read Japanese Books with the Listening-Reading Method
Want to read Japanese books and novels? We outline a method to help get you started - and build your Japanese listening skills along the way.
Which Japanese Books Get Left Out of Translation?
There are more Japanese books being made available in English every year. Still, only a small portion of them get translated.
Books: Japanese Film and the Challenge of Video
By Jonathan Clements. Tom Mes’s new book begins in 2022 with Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car winning an Oscar, followed by a flood of gushing articles about how…
10 Japanese Literature Books To Read This Halloween
In the spirit of spooky season, it’s time to delve into the mysterious, the unsettling and the downright terrifying.
20 Books in 2020 (Part IV) Japanese Literature
It’s getting closer and closer to the end now, but there’s still a little while to go. Thanks to my Kindle screen becoming a temperamental little nuisance (by…
20 Books in 2020 (Part V) Japanese Literature
So, here we are. After spending a whole year attempting the challenge to read 20 books’ worth of Japanese literature in 2020, the deadline is here.
10 Japanese Literature Books For Your Autumn Reading List
If you're looking to add some spice to your autumn reading and wish you could travel to Japan this fall, let the pages of a book take you…
Drinking Bomb and Shooting Meth
Alexander, Jeffrey Drinking Bomb and Shooting Meth: Alcohol and Drug Use in Japan Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 2018 https://w...
Northern War #09 — Day Drinking
Does nobody know how to use a chair in this show? Impressions: I miss when this show was about insane clown posses. All the pontificating nonsense about…
Top 5 Anime Drinking Spots
I’ve actually been trying to put together a top list of anime bars more or less since I started this blog but, these are surprisingly rare. Maybe this…
Junko Takekawa’s Recommended Japanese Books – Cheltenham Literatur...
Junko Takekawa’s Recommended Japanese Books – Cheltenham Literature Festival 2022 Our Senior Arts Programme Officer joined one of the events with Daniel Hahn as part of the Cheltenham Literature…
The Apothecary’s Diaries #09 — Day Drinking
I like how it looks like she's just done with Japan. Oh man, a telop (tsunami warning due to earthquake) in this day and age when 95% of the…
Shy #11 — Day Drinking With Children
The best Christmas activity. Impressions: This stupid fight started back in episode 8 after an entire episode of flashbacks, and ends, with another episode mainly of flashbacks.…
Books & Sake
「高円寺古本酒場ものがたり」狩野俊 Story of Koenji Books & Sake, by Suguru Karino The “Story of Koenji Books & Sake” is Suguru Karino’s account of how he started a bookstore and…
Books & Sake
「高円寺古本酒場ものがたり」狩野俊 Story of Koenji Books & Sake, by Suguru Karino The “Story of Koenji Books & Sake” is Suguru Karino’s account of how he started a bookstore and…
Books: Ghibliotheque
By Andrew Osmond. The Ghibliotheque podcast started in 2018, and soon became an institution. It offered a journey through the films of Studio Ghibli, presented by Michael Leader…
Books: Sexiled
By Shelley Pallis. Tanya is twenty-five years old. She’s got half a decade of adventuring behind her, looting treasure from dungeons, spell-casting to protect her friends from goblins…
Books: Orienting
By Jonathan Clements. “My stay here has been so short,” said Rabindranath Tagore to Japanese students in 1916, “that one may think I have not earned my right…
Junko Takekawa’s Recommended Japanese Books – The Times and Sunday...
Junko Takekawa’s Recommended Japanese Books – The Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival 2023 During The Huddle Free Programme at The Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival…
AniTAY Podcast S6 E21: Drinking of Kings
It’s finally the end of the year, and the AniTAY crew finish it off by discussing their favorite anime and drinks.
Loner Rock! #06 — Day Drinking With Teenagers
Someone definitely has their life together. Impressions: I'm not sure what the stranger part of this episode was; that they felt like there was so much story…
Books: Studio Ghibli
By Jonathan Clements. Producer Toshio Suzuki was entertainingly underwhelmed when he was approached by agents for the pop stars Chage and Aska, who asked if Studio Ghibli would…
Books: Otherside Picnic
By Shelley Pallis. Sorawo Kamikoshi is a loner, a twenty-year-old nerd studying cultural anthropology at a Saitama university, whose hobby is exploring spooky places. Nor are these randomly…
Books: Hayao Miyazaki
By Andrew Osmond. Hayao Miyazaki, published to tie in with the current exhibition about the director at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, is a whopping big book.…
Books: Terminal Boredom
By Jonathan Clements. “There is something wrong with our present society,” Izumi Suzuki once wrote, “and I can’t stand SF written by people who don’t understand that… Even…
The Best Books
Buying books, especially old books, is a fascination and my biggest weakness. I love the old wear and tear on antiques, and sitting and pondering where the scraped…
Books: Anime’s Identity
By Jonathan Clements. Stevie Suan’s new book, Anime’s Identity, cannot resist telling a story from the production of King’s Avatar (above), a 2019 Chinese animated series that subcontracted…
Books: Tearmoon Empire
By Jonathan Clements. Then she woke up, and it was all a dream. Or was it? The teenage princess Mia Luna Tearmoon vividly recalls being eight years older,…
Books: Spirit Chronicles
By Shelley Pallis. Yuri Kitayama’s Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles has several different beginnings, and to be frank, I am not sure that it has stopped beginning yet, even…
Books: Monster Kids
By Jonathan Clements. In his lively new book Monster Kids: How Pokémon Taught a Generation to Catch Them All, Daniel Dockery talks us through the original plans in…
Books: Hell Mode
By Shelley Pallis. Kenichi is a gamer suffering from that common modern malaise, a frustration with games that make life too easy for him. He’s just spent three…
Books: Rediscovered Classics
By Zoe Crombie. Anime has taken inspiration from Western cultures throughout much of its history, from Astro Boy’s Disney-inspired aesthetics to the gorgeous European locales of films like…
Books: Rebuild World
By Jonathan Clements. When we first see Akira, he is gripped in the jaws of a mutant dog. Nafuse’s Rebuild World ditches the tiresome induction scene of many…
Books: Reading Murakami
By Jonathan Clements. Almost everything that is written about fiction is either reception (what the reader thought of the book) or production (an occasional making-of about the author…
Books: Combat Baker…
By Jeannette Ng. The light novel series The Combat Baker and the Automaton Waitress follows Lud “Silver Wolf” Langart, a former captain and mech-operator who retires after a…
Books: Tatami Galaxy
By Tom Wilmot. Any mention of The Tatami Galaxy usually brings to mind Masaaki Yuasa’s much-loved 2010 anime. The charming series has become something of a modern classic,…
Books: Infinite Dendrogram
By Shelley Pallis. Infinite Dendrogram is the best game ever invented, a “virtual reality massively multiplayer online game” but not a crap one like all the ones that…
Books: Leiji Matsumoto
By Jonathan Clements. For all the passion and excitement that the contributors bring to the new collection Leiji Matsumoto: Essays on the Anime and Manga Legend, their subject…
Books: Kyoto Stories
By Jonathan Clements. “Riding on public transportation in Japan makes you feel a part of the general population,” writes Steve Alpert in Kyoto Stories. “One of the people.…
I Survived 2020 by Drinking and Watching Anime
And I highly recommend it to all of you! Well, here we are, another year down. This is probably my most cherished blogging tradition. Every year, on January…
Under Ninja #01 — Day Drinking With Loose Women
*gasp* An origami!? Impressions: I know I said this in the season preview, but after an episode, I still really don't know what to make of this.…
STARMYU Renewed My Love for Anime Drinking Games
Titles: Star Mu; STARMYU; High School Star Musical Genre: Comedy, School, Slice of Life, Music, Stardust Episodes: 12 Studio: C-Station Ayana Academy is a school like no other.…
Just Funky: Sailor Moon Carafe with Drinking Glass
Sailor Moon Carafe with Drinking Glass DetailsWe don’t have much details as this was posted...
Square Enix Manga & Books Reveals New Books Coming Spring 2023
The good folks from Square Enix Manga & Books have sent us their upcoming release slate for spring 2023. Headlining their releases is the Ch...
Kabukicho Club Shut Down over Illegal Porn Star Drinking
An adult video company made millions with a bar in Kabukicho. Now the CEO's under arrest because he never paid for the right piece of paper.