Absolutely, yes. You'll never be able to fully understand a culture until you've spent time in it (not just tours, either, actually immersed within the culture). I highly recommend everyone spend quality time in Japan, because it's a wonderful, historic, place.

Just got done watching tonight's episode of Mapping Kyoto Streets. I was surprised how much there can be to do on just one street (Nijo-Dori on this episode). There were 3 museums (two art, one tech), Heian-Jinju shrine, the Kyoto city zoo, a couple of restaurants in the traditional machiya building design, a large group of temples (relocated there after the city's great fire), a traditional Japanese sweet shop, and Nijo-jo (the castle of Ieyesu Tokugawa, the country's first Shogun).

On the news, it was also mentioned that a hacker group targeted the Japanese government. Anonymous (the group who shut PSN down last year) are suspected.

There's a lot of incorrect information there. Ieyesu was a Shogun, but absolutely not the country's first Shogun. He was the founder of the Edo era of Japan, yes, but that wasn't the "first Japan" by any means.

Nijo-jo was one of Ieyesu's castles, but not actually the important one. Ieyesu was the one that moved the capital of Japan from Kyoto to Edo (Tokyo). The imperial court remained in Kyoto, though, and that was the purpose for building the castle.

I guess I should have worded it a little differently, but I was just trying to get the program's main points down. And In all fairness, the program (made by NHK), did call him the nation's first Shogun.

I guess I should have worded it a little differently, but I was just trying to get the program's main points down. And In all fairness, the program (made by NHK), did call him the nation's first Shogun.

They they specifically say "first Shogun," or something like "first Shogun of modern Japan?" Tokugawa was the man who made Japan more-or-less what we know it to be now, but "Shogun" is essentially the top military man in the country - there were many, many Shoguns before Tokugawa.

Wouldn't be the first time the mass media got a basic fact wrong

On tonight's Imagine-Nation (on NHK World), the third game in the Science Adventure series, Robotics; Notes was highlighted.
The series is really popular in Japan, and the games are like an interactive graphic novel (it's a story, and your choices affect how the story'll go). In this new game however, you'll interact with the environment by scanning everything with an in game smartphone. JAXA (Japan's equivalent to NASA) is even allowing the dev to use their name in game, and real world staff members will appear as in game characters. Doesn't look like something that'd come out west (If anyone knows otherwise, feel free to correct me).

Chaos; Head Noah and Steins; Gate are the two previous games in the series (the latter even popular enough to become an anime).

Ryosuke Aoike was also interviewed. He has made recent animated hits, such as Catman, and Kamiusagi Ropé.

The program also finally named their mascot. They named him Mallow-Kun (which is ironic, because it kind of looks like Mallow from Super Mario RPG, lol).

Both of them got turned into anime. Chaos;Head was notorious for being crazy and ultimately senseless. Steins;Gate was more recent and seems to be well liked in Japan (not sure of its status outside Japan, but a lot of people I interact with said it was majorly disappointing).

Just finished up today's episode of Tokyo Eye. They just taught some stuff about how to look for homestyle restaurants (ramen-ya & Teishoku), sushi shops, and family restaurants. Also some phrases you'll need to know in order to eat in those various places.

Hmm I should watch Tokyos eye sometime

If you have a mobile device, you can download the NHK World app for free, and stream their programming. They have some cool programs.

The Mark of Beauty was on tonight. The episode was about the history of linen fabrics in Japan. I watched the first ten minutes, but it wasn't really in my interest zone, so that's all I watched. If you're into that though, you may enjoy the program.

Watching today's Begin Japanology. The subject is is the Shikoku Pilgrimage. It's a spiritual journey to visit 88 temples in the region (it takes 50 days by foot). While many had taken the trip by bus, in the 90's it became popular to rough it out, and more recently it's become quite popular with foreigners.

Im going to a site that teaches Japanese words, phrases, writing, ect. It's really cool

Yeah, I got an app on my iPod called Hiragana & Katakana. I'm decent enough with the Katakana system (I'm able to at least traverse Nintendo Japan's website, and the website of TV Tokyo, because of it), but I really need to get hiragana down (and I could always still get better at Katakana as well), so this app's really helping.

It teaches every character for each system, the correct order in which to write them (practicing this in Swapnote), introduces new words all the time (everything's voiced BTW), quizzes on each lesson (they're randomized, and you can mix quizzes from multiple lessons), it has digital flash cards, and it's all free.

I'm regularly visiting Japanese sites to try and pick stuff up from what I've learned, and am soon going to download NHK World's learning Japanese podcasts to listen to.

I just watched some Tokyo Eye, and have to say its informative indeed

Glad to hear you were able to watch it.

I'm watching Countryside Encounters right now. They have a celebrity (Gen Takanaka, a singer) and put them in a small town to interact with the locals. It looks like even Japan can't escape from reality TV...

If anything, Japan has more reality tv than anywhere else in the world.

Yeah...outside of game shows, which have been around for a long time, I haven't seen too many reality shows lately. What few episodes of japanese reality shows I've seen were really good, though.

I've been doing a lot of Origami lately and I invented a Gamer's Sword you can make to look like the Master Sword or a Minecraft Stone Sword. I'll post pictures soon.

Just wtched a little ten minute program called Satoyama. It talked about the small town of Toyooka, and how the endangered Oriental Stork has started to flourish there in recent years.