If you’ve been planning a trip to Japan or looking at travel photos online, you might have seen the beautiful, calligraphy-filled pages of temple stamp books. They’re called goshuin, unique and artistic stamps collected from temples and shrines across Japan. Temple stamps, or goshuin, are beautiful calligraphy and stamp designs given at temples and shrines […]

Many people are surprised to learn that Japanese doesn’t utilize a single alphabet like English or Spanish. Instead, it has not one, not two, but three different writing systems: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. This unique characteristic can seem complex at first, but each alphabet serves its own special purpose, like having different tools in a

I know that most people struggle with learning Japanese because of kanji, and I understand them. Kanji seems so difficult and there are so many kanji that it is normal to ask how can the Japanese learn all that. The answer might be surprising to you, but there’s no secret technique that makes the Japanese

If you watch videos about Japanese food or if you watch anime regularly, you have probably noticed that they always say the phrase “itadakimasu” before eating something. I found this quite interesting, so I did some research to find out why Japanese say “itadakimasu”. The Japanese say “itadakimasu” before eating because it shows extremely polite

Almost every Western tourist does a little research before traveling to a country that has huge cultural differences like Japan. And often, you come across some useful information regarding common mistakes that foreigners make when visiting a country different from their own. Blowing your nose, for example, seems to be a normal thing to most

If you’re thinking about learning Japanese or if you are just curious about Japanese culture, you probably already asked yourself this question about the Japanese language. Other than the rather complex characters that make this exotic language, the next thing that we notice is the direction of writing. And this is kind of confusing when

Have you ever wondered why Japanese don’t wear shoes inside? Well I did. And it’s funny because I’ve always seen in anime people taking off their shoes all the time and I didn’t understand why they did it. I mean, it’s kind of normal to take your shoes at home, but in restaurants? This is

Japan is one of those countries where there is so much to see that you don’t even know where to start. It has so many beautiful places like the famous Mount Fuji, the incredible Golden Pavilion temple (Kinkaku-ji) covered in gold leaves, or the never-ending red gates at Fushimi Inara-Taisha. Japan is also a unique

You can’t talk about Japan without talking about the Japanese food. For the Japanese people, food is an art, and they surely make you notice that in their preparation, their selection of ingredients, and their presentation. The Japanese prepare their food according to the seasons so you will never have the same dish in the

The other day I was watching a program on NHK World Japan called Grand Sumo Highlights and I started to be interested in this sport. Even more than that, I started doing some research about the most important traditional sports, to see if they had the same complex tradition, and where could I see some