Teenage Mutant Ninja Tortoises?!

Do you know the difference between the words? Turtle and tortoise, that is. And, yes, in answer to your question, this is of critical, life-altering importance.

Well, here's the answer in 3D HD 1080p! Not, really, but those tech specs are impressive sounding, right? Anyway, here is a turtle:

A good friend. He's a turtle.

And a tortoise:

His name's Guillermo Silvioti.

Spot the difference? Hint: It has nothing to do with cafes or double shot espressos.

Convenience Stores are Gates to Hades

Did you know, in a country which is roughly the size of 0.55 Texases (or one Montana), there are 40,000 convenience stores. That's about two and a half times the amount in the U.S. and 4 for every 3 square miles of habitable land in Japan. On average, people here live within a couple hundred yards of one.

Seething evil for your convenience

You ask, "But, Brandon, why do you insinuate that they are monoliths of evil and destruction?"

Onomatopoeia

I love studying Japanese. Maybe this comes though a bit in the posts.

One of the really cool things about this language is the absolute abundance of onomatopoeia. The classic examples of these in English are words like meow, oink, and buzz. In English these kind of words tend to be animal or sound-efecty sounds (think pow, bam, tic toc et cetera).

Onomatopoeia are always better in bright, overbearing colors.

Well, Japanese takes this to a new level.

Zoo, Furoshiki and Commodification

That last post sucked. So here's a baby elephant.

It's an elephant!

You're welcome.

I love elephants. From time to time my brain's like, "Hey, Brandon, you know what?" And when my brain starts conversations like this I get very wary. Anyway, so I'm like, "Umm, what, brain?"

On to Details

It's been a while. A serious while. I sort of thought about playing it off, "Hey guys, so this long reprise from writing was an intentional exploit into... (blah blah blah)." But really, I've just been doing other things and subjecting this poor blog to heaps of neglect.

Anyway, this whole apologizing for not writing often seems to have become somewhat habitual, so from here on out, though I will attempt to keep posts more regular, let's just forgo the introductory platitudes.

And henceforth dropping the (semi-)chronological recounting here on Nihon and Brandon's Nonsense, we'll delve more in depth into some interesting aspects that are Japan and Brandon. Of first note is that doing this is itself a comment on what "settling in" has taken place. In less pedantic and obfuscated terms, I'm seeing Japan with a more detailed vision and so can actually write about details instead of sweeping (and probably wildly irrelevant) generalizations.

Cell Phone Signal is Everywhere

In case you were wondering, in case your life is incomplete without this information, in case you're atop Mt. Fuji and want to order that supreme pizza with extra cheese, cell phone signal is alive and well, bowing not the slightest to the full 3,776 meters (12,388 ft) of Mt. Fuji glory. 

You may ask, "Why in the craziness of all crazies were you carrying a cell phone on a 12 hour hike?" or "Did you call anyone from the top?" or "Are there doughnuts at the peak?"

Read on and the many questions besieging you shall be allayed.

夢を見た

You know, there’s a turning point when learning languages. At least, it’s what we language learners like to tell ourselves. We like turning points. It makes us feel important and that we’re making progress. So this particular turning point has to do with dreaming. The talking cats, flying through the sky, Freud’s wet dream kind of dreams.