Author: Grigoris Miliaresis

Contrary to what many people outside believe, Japan isn’t a science-fiction utopia where everything is done by robots and artificial intelligence. Especially when it comes to internet penetration, ...

Together with rice, tea is probably the drink that most people associate with Japan, even if they have never been to the Land of the Rising Sun. Green tea, and especially the powdered matcha, has ...

The way the Japanese treat their pets, and especially their dogs – the tiny dogs that can fit into the tiny apartments of megacities like Tokyo or Osaka - is sometimes puzzling: it’s often ...

Though renowned as one of the world's top makers of calculators, Casio was also among the first companies to create quartz watches, both electronic and digital: watches that could display the time ...

You wouldn’t think so considering they spend half of their life barefoot, but the Japanese are very serious when it comes to shoes. Long gone are the days of the zori and geta split-toe sandals of ...

It’s a fact: mosquitoes are one of the prices we have to pay for summer. On the other hand, considering how bad the Japanese summer is, mosquitoes fall under the “insult to injury” category. ...

It’s amazing what people will try to get some relief from bad weather. I mean who would have thought that having what is, essentially, pasta flowing in cold water through bamboo tubes cut in half ...

For all its fame as a world hub of martial arts with traditions going back centuries (yes, the samurai didn’t just wield their swords: there were schools and teachers and techniques and diplomas), ...

For the host country, the Olympic and Paralympic Games are an opportunity to show off its best in tourist attractions, business, and all kinds of achievements, including cultural. Japan is no ...

Despite their fascination with high-tech stuff (or precisely, because of it), the Japanese are surprisingly very attached to their historical tradition. The samurai, the warrior class prominent ...

One of the many contradictions that make Japan such an interesting place is the mix of sophistication and simplicity. Take summer desserts, for example: every summer, in confectioneries all over ...

Let’s face it: despite the talk about restarting the world economy, COVID-19 is still here, the vaccine is still not, and the best way to stay safe is staying at home, provided we can find a way ...

One of the big changes the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to societies everywhere across the world is how we work. All public health authorities agree that working from home is one of the best ways ...

There is at least one thing that the COVID-19 pandemic has made us look at in a different way and that is toilet paper. Even in usually cool-headed and not-prone-to-hysteria Japan, as soon as the ...

And suddenly (well, not exactly: it took about a month) from just another Japanese quirk, face masks became a world standard! All those “uniquely Japanese” and “only in Tokyo” pictures of ...