Trigger warning: racism and anti-Blackness. A friend of mine sent me this video via Twitter DM today. I thought for a moment the text in the thumbnail read “BLM message to Japan,” but I was too optimistic. It was a horribly anti-social justice message from a Japanese man who seems to believe that he somehow represents the majority of Japanese… Read more →
This video is about 3 years old but for some reason I didn’t post it here on my blog. It’s on my English channel, which I’m rejuvenating (finally). So make sure to subscribe to this channel even if you’re already subscribed to my Japanese channel! Read more →
When I started college, there already existed prides and rainbow flags. I didn’t have to create queer spaces to join or queer symbols to identify with. They were there, and I’d join rainbow-filled events and groups. And I was constantly disappointed with how those events were trans-indifferent, gay men-centered, obsessed with money and reputation, anti-intersectional, ethnocentric, disability-unfriendly, male-dominated, etc. etc. Read more →
One of the reasons I started this channel was because I had activist/scholar friends who struggled with English when communicating with fellow activists, researchers, scholars etc. from other cultures. I wanted to help them. Some of my past videos are directly catered to that kind of audience, but here’s my serious attempt to create a repository of social justice vocabulary… Read more →
How do we talk about sexism, heterosexism, and ciscentrism in anime/manga when it’s part of “their culture”? Can we criticize misogynous, homophobic and transphobic anime/manga without being ethnocentric and arrogant? What’s the best way to address them? Or should we all shut our mouths and let them be? Would that make us anti-feminist and anti-queer? Read more →
In this English lesson video, I explain to ESL learners the meaning of the word “sound” in the sense of an argument being logical and based on truth, then move on to explain validity and soundness using one of the homophobic arguments recently made by Japanese lawmaker Mio Sugita where she argues that students should not be taught about LGBT… Read more →
Language is a weird thing. It’s external but also integral to our human psyche. By the time you’ve learned to speak, you become situated, recognizably to all including yourself, in the world. But if language has such a formational functionality, it must mean that when we learn a second language, we are to some extent repeating a similar process of… Read more →
Consumers and creators of BL are often the target of online harassment and attacks. But I think there’s misogyny and homophobia behind that. (This video is in Japanese but subbed in English.) Read more →
Music has always been my passion since I started taking piano lessons at 10. I got my first Mac (the rounded, classic CRT iMac!) at 14 in 1999 and started making music on it. I was once in a surf music band playing tenor sax. Now I’m mostly back to computer music and creating J-Pop- and kayokyoku-influenced music. This song,… Read more →
How do I say “bless you” in Japanese when someone sneezes? Why do Japanese people say “itadakimasu” (I shall take/eat it) before eating something? Well, language and culture are closely tied to each other. And to really speak a second language naturally, you need to learn the culture as well. But, what if that second culture contains something bad, like… Read more →
