With a little help from my friends

It's not overstatement to say that my buddy Shinnosuke saved my life. I tell you!!!

He took a lot of pictures of his hometown Kagurazaka to introduce, so I'll show you some.

Do you know about her? She is called Peko chan（ペコちゃん）in Japanese. Peko chan is hugely popular character of the Japanese confectionary maker Fujiya. What you can see on the pictures is a Japanese dessert called Peko chan yaki（ペコちゃん焼き）. It is similar to a Japanese dessert called Imagawayaki（今川焼き）, and it is normally filled with azuki bean paste. It tastes like a sponge cake, so why don't you try it?

Next Week: I'm going to write about a shrine in Shinnosuke's hometown!

Nirvana

Yes, Nirvana is still immensely popular here in Japan, but forget about Kurt Cobain this time. Nirvana is a state that is free from something like lust, anger or craving. It is also the highest spiritual state that can possibly be achieved. If you achieved that goal once, no matter what happens to you, a state of perfect peace will never be bothered physically and mentally. For example, you will never be overwhelmed by emotion when you face your relative's death or hear someone calling your name because people who achieved that state are able to see everything for what it is like the Beatles sings "Let It Be". But I know nobody's perfect, and it's not easy to be perfect. So Kurt would say, "Come As You Are"!

Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon

I know that a lot of singers like Alicia Keys, Lloyd Banks and Culture Club sing songs titled Karma. But what does it mean really? Here's the definition; in religion such as Hinduism and Buddhism, karma is the belief that your actions in this life affect all your future lives. Karma is called gou（業）in Japanese, and it is composed of three things: actions your body make, words speaking out from your mouth and intensions that exists in your heart. And originally karma means actions caused by these three elements. If you haven't done anything wrong in this life, you would have a glory life in the next life. If you have done something wrong so far like killing someone or stealing something or betraying someone, you would literally have a really hard life. In turn if you have an extremely hard life now, you had done something wrong in the previous life because most of Japanese believe in samsara. Samsara is the belief that people are supposed to be born again and again and again. But I want you to remember that this is just a belief, so maybe it's not going to happen to you (you're relieved to hear that now, right?) In my opinion, this is a good lesson or a cautionary lesson that encourages all people not to do something wrong. Please make sure not to do something wrong, though. Why? Because it's not nice to make your mom cry!

Hi!

Welcome to my page where I blog about everything related to Japan.There are tons of things that you haven't known or discovered yet. So I do hope that I could blow you away and share a load of indescribable moments with you all by telling you any kinds of stuff about Japan! Japanese culture is often distorted or twisted because of cultural misunderstandings. So here I am to help you! Mainly I am going to write about indie musicians playing hard in Tokyo, the real meanings of Japanese words ( nirvana, karma) because we can find a lot of Japanese being used in English (They're often mistaken, though), the Japanese celebrities who are/were popular outside Japan. I want many people from all over the world living in Japan or outside Japan to read this blog. I hope you enjoy :-)