Toluu

Tofugu.com

A Wonky Japanese Culture and Language Blog

How to Follow Japan-Blogs Like a Pro (Plus Some e-Begging For Your Help)November 25

I follow hundreds of Japan-related blogs, just so I can keep up with the Japan-news (and the blogging competition, too). It may seem really difficult to follow so many blogs (not to mention all the others I read), but with RSS, it’s super easy… Oh, and did I mention addictingly fun, too?

Tofugu is currently participating in DailyBlogTips’ “Blogging Idol 2,” which is a pretty big competition that has a lot to do with RSS. Right now, Tofugu is in 11th place (out of over a hundred), and would definitely love your help! You can make our dreams come true by voting for us (pretty please?), or just by subscribing to our RSS feed, which is what I’ll be telling you about after the break. Just so it’s not too much e-begging for you to handle, I’ll be spinning it in a way that makes things wonderful for you too:

What is RSS?

RSS is one of the most amazing things to ever grace the Interwebs. RSS feeds, paired with a feed reader, make it really easy to subscribe to hundreds of websites, and get the new content of those websites sent directly to you as soon as they are available. For ex

Goku’s Monster Form: Requires REAL Moonshine to EnjoyNovember 21

This is just a small post to get you through ruin your weekend. Does everyone remember Goku’s Oozaru (big monkey) form? When he gets moonlight, he turns into a big monkey, thanks to his gland filled tail. Well, the image shown above isn’t necessarily a finished product (though honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if it is), but we do know that it’s real, since Fox has been asking people to take it down. Besides this, I only have a short video, which can be seen after the jump. It’s mostly a response to all those Dragonball movie fans I angered in my last video, hehe.

Another thing I realized Goku’s Monster form looks like. Anyone old enough to remember this?

iKnow: The Best Japanese Vocabulary Flashcard Site on the WebNovember 18

We’ve all been through it. We’ve all experienced it. Studying vocabulary can be a huge drag. There are tons of different resources for vocab studying, but none of them out there are really really good. Usually, you have to input all the information yourself (which takes longer than just studying without flashcards), or you just study and forget to go back. No vocabulary resource has been so streamlined and so well put together before iKnow.co.jp, which, of course, is what we’ll be looking at in pretty good detail today.

If you’ve ever had trouble with vocabulary, iKnow will change that. If you think you’ve been doing fine all this time, you’ll soon realize that it can only get better for you.

Here’s why iKnow is so good at pile driving kanji / vocabulary into the mat (is my WWF vocab okay?). Firstly, iKnow hits vocab from all angles. Hands on learner, visual learner, auditory learner… doesn’t matter. There’s something for everyone. In fact, if you use all these angles to your advantage, you’re only solidifying and remembering recently learned vocab more efficiently and better. I don’t know how often I forget vocab I’ve just learned. iKnow prevents this as much as possible.

The Algorithm

Obama-City, Japan Celebrates for some reasonNovember 6

I’m not sure why, but the city of Obama (Japan) is celebrating for some reason…did something happen recently that I’m not aware of? Who the heck is this guy in the picture anyways?

I kid, I kid. It’s no secret that Japan loves Obama (not to mention most of the modern world), but if the name of your city is Obama, then that means you’ve got to jump on this opportunity to make your city a little famous, and possibly get a few tourist dollars out of it as well (er…maybe not dollars. Nobody wants those anymore).

Our friends over at TokyoMango dug up this video of the Obama-city folks celebrating the President Elect.

Here’s another one from the same Youtube Channel of a guy handing out Obama-Burgers. Then, an interview with him.

The Japanese McDonalds Menu (I’m actually lovin’ it!)November 2

Surprisingly (to us Americans, maybe), McDonalds all over the world has different menus to cater themselves to the locals. Even in Hawaii, you’ll find things like ramen, Portuguese Sausage / Eggs / Rice Plates, and tarot pies. Japanese McDonalds, of course has it’s own quirks, not to mention special choices on the menu.

Besides the food, Japanese McDonalds has some other differences as well. Ronald McDonald has a different name: Donald (ドナルド). McDonalds Restaurants are generally a lot cleaner, staff seems to be a little friendlier, and everything is a little more upscale (at least as upscale as McDonalds can be). The drinks and fries are considerably smaller, though the hamburgers are only a little smaller. They have most of the staple McDonald choices on the menu, but I went through and found all the ones you might not see in your country of origin. Let’s start with breakfast!

Breakfast Menu (朝マック)

Feel free to click on the image above to get a closer view, but we’ll be getting i