Japanese people dish on things foreigners told them that they’d never realized before about their home country.
countries
What could be hard about taking a pee in Poland? Where are you likely to see camel racing with robotic jockeys? Answers to these and more below!
Amerika. Itaria. Kanada. The majority of countries are known in Japan by names that sound vaguely similar to their native monikers. So why on earth do the Japanese call the UK ‘Igirisu‘?
You know how in English you can take pretty much any noun and make it a verb—derivation for the cunning linguists out there—by adding to to the front? For example, how the search engine Google has become to google, as in, “Why the hell are you asking me? Go google it, you twit!”
Well, you can do the same thing in Japanese by adding –ru or a handful of other suffixes to the end of a word, and some Japanese net users recently had some fun with this by turning country names into some very non-PC verbs.
Have a look at our geopolitical dictionary and see how your country fared.
In 2013, a grand total of 10,363,904 foreign tourists visited Japan! That number surpasses the goal of the Visit Japan Campaign, which began in 2003 with a goal to increase the number of overseas visitors to 10 million.
The Japanese language version of popular travel planning and information website TripAdvisor was quite excited by this news, and recently produced their own visual graphic detailing some fun facts about foreign tourists in the Land of the Rising Sun during 2013. Can you guess which country most of the visitors came from, or which country had the highest percentage jump in visitors? How about the most popular tourist destinations for foreigners traveling in Japan? Find out all that and more after the jump.
Google operates hundreds of domain names for different regions around the world, from Australia (google.com.au) to Zimbabwe (google.co.zw). And searching for the same keyword throws up different results depending on which country Google thinks you’re in.
So what happens when you search “Japan” in different countries’ Google Image Search? To find out, a curious Japanese netizen did exactly that. The image results reveal a little bit about how each country sees Japan – some just might surprise you!
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Survey asks foreign tourists what bothered them in Japan, more than half gave same answer
Japan’s human washing machines will go on sale to general public, demos to be held in Tokyo
Japan’s deadliest food claims more victims, but why do people keep eating it for New Year’s?
We deeply regret going into this tunnel on our walk in the mountains of Japan
Studio Ghibli releases Kodama forest spirits from Princess Mononoke to light up your home
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Tokyo fish market breaks New Year auction record as single fish sells for over 5 million yen【Vid】
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Should you dip your cake in sake? One Japanese brewer says no, but actually yes【 Taste test】
7 great places to see Mt. Fuji from without having to climb it
7-Eleven Japan starts new temporary luggage storage service in over 300 branches
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Starbucks celebrates Halloween with new Frappuccino, tea and drinkware in Japan
Dress like your favourite Lupin III character with suits and kimono designed by Japanese tailors
The Purple Lucky Bag from Village Vanguard is an extra-large waste of money
New intentionally ugly anime sweaters from Japan will keep you warm and un-cool this winter【Pics】
We found possibly the quietest Japanese-style hotel in Tokyo’s bustling Shinjuku district
7-Eleven Japan’s ramen-cooking robot whipped us up a bowl of noodles【Taste test】
Super-cheap yakiniku restaurant sells meat by the mouthful to give you exactly what you want
New Roaring Totoro plushies from Studio Ghibli make us view the character in a new light
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