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Articles from mendoi-apps, published in English after a language check.
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- Why Does the Japanese Spider Crab Feel So Unreal in Person?Why does the Japanese spider crab feel unreal?
- Why Did Japanese School Lunches Taste So Good?Why were school lunches in Japan so good back in elementary and junior high?
- Why do some Japanese restaurants make you pour your own water?Walk into a few restaurants in Japan and you'll notice that water is handled very differently from one to the next.
- Why Do the Japanese Live So Long? What You Eat and Which Diseases It CutsIn 2025, life expectancy at birth in Japan was 81.35 years for men and 87.33 years for women.
- Why the Japanese pension generation gap feels so infuriating“Pay ¥1 million now. Don’t worry—you’ll get the benefit back when you’re old.”
- Why Akita's Forest Doesn't Look Like Japan: Postwar Cedar PlantationsAt the 2026 GeoGuessr World Championship, a single road through what looked like a Japanese mountain forest came up.
- Why Lawmakers' Pay Feels Wrong, and It's Not Just That It's HighBy law, a member of Japan's National Diet (the national parliament) receives a monthly salary of 1,294,000 yen (129 man 4000 in Japanese counting units; 1 man…
- Why Does Paid Leave in Japan Expire After 2 Years?On paper, paid leave is a worker's right under Japanese law.
- Work Hard Where Effort Actually Pays Off: Big Japanese Firms, Foreign Companies, and English"If you work hard, it'll pay off."
- Why Packed Shelves Are Fun at Don Quijote but a Mess at HomeThe gummy aisle at Don Quijote, the Japanese discount chain, is basically a decision-making test.
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no YaibaMeccha Chameleon: Why the "Clam Strategy" Keeps You AliveIf you want to survive in MECCHA CHAMELEON (a Japanese hide-and-seek game where you paint your body to blend into the stage), here's the one thing to remember…
- The Human Body is Too Defective. Why Are "Physical Fitness +1" and Muscle Strength, Endurance, and Cardiovascular Health Separate Skills?When people say "you have good physical fitness," they are putting quite different abilities into the same box.
- Pigeons flee, and so have humans: why being able to leave protectsIn September 2026, a 19-year-old employee of a Japanese electricity company died after falling from a transmission tower.
- Was UNO named after someone called Uno? Why shout it at one cardAfter staring at the word UNO long enough, a Japanese speaker can run into a strange bug: UNO starts looking less like a card game and more like the Japanese…
- Why can long gray hair make a young person look older? +6 yearsImagine a young man whose face alone looks youthful and actor-like, but whose long hair is dyed white.
- One PieceWhen does Luffy-style "X ossan" naming become rude in Japanese?Imagine seeing a man in glasses who vaguely reminds you of Takumi Tsujimoto, the character played by Gō Ayano in Netflix’s Tokyo Swindlers.[6]
- Why so much casual speech at the register? Service sociolinguisticsAt city offices, clinics, and restaurants, everyone somehow sounded unusually relaxed.
- Why Japan uses both Crown sedans and compact police carsJapanese police fleets can look oddly inconsistent: a large Crown-type patrol car may be followed by a compact car that appears far less intimidating.
- Is a 9% 500 mL can really one drink? It's about 2.6 beersA 500 mL can of 9% chuhai (a Japanese canned spirit-and-soda drink) looks like one can, but it holds 36 g of pure alcohol.
- Is Looking at Sperm and Eggs All Day Kind of Sexy? What I Learned About EmbryologistsThe Japanese job title, "haibaiyoshi" (literally "embryo culture specialist"), doesn't tell you much on its own. In English, it's an embryologist.
- How Yakiniku All-You-Can-Eat Makes Money at 3500 Yen: The Cost MathAll-you-can-eat yakiniku (Japanese grill-it-yourself BBQ) in Japan usually costs somewhere around 3500 yen.
- Sukiya Cheese Beef Bowl: Less Rice, More Meat? Medium vs. Extra Beef vs. MegaYou want Sukiya's "Torotto 3-Cheese Gyudon" (three-cheese beef bowl), the one Japanese fans call "Chi-gyu."
- My Final Take on Wolf ChildrenNote: this article contains spoilers for Wolf Children (the original Japanese title is "Ookami Kodomo no Ame to Yuki").
- The pudding is sold out, so civilization has fallen: a worldwide memeThe internet occasionally produces a sentence so overengineered that it feels like a policy paper written during a tantrum.
- Does a last-minute shift change eat your day off? Night work travelYour calendar says “day off.” The hotel is booked. Then the message arrives the day before:
- Jujutsu KaisenSukuna would outgrow the home-economics teacher in one lessonNothing about Sukuna normally suggests an elementary-school home-economics classroom.
- Firsthand AI writing vs AI news commentary: what's different?There is a slightly rude hypothesis that becomes tempting when you read a lot of AI coverage:
- Can you win at real estate by following McDonald's? Daiwa House testYes, there is a sensible strategy here: use the places where major homebuilders are committing large amounts of land and capital as a first-pass screen for…
- You Can Build Fitness Without Running: Walking, Cardio, Blood Pressure, and RetinolBeing able to walk for a long time while getting exhausted quickly when jogging is not contradictory.
- AURA Used to Mean “Breeze”: From Frieren’s Guillotine Demon to a Love Hotel Where “Everyday Life Is Already Gone”You see a sign that says HOTEL AURA.
- ChiikawaIs *Chiikawa* a Post-Apocalyptic Japan? — Mental Independence, Qualification Society, the Black Shooting Star, and a Civilization of Finished ProductsThe world of Chiikawa contains grasslands, caves, monsters, chimeras, and mysterious places where food appears.
- Was the Showa-Era 16-Month Bonus Real? The Salary System Behind “Can You Fight 24 Hours?”“Japanese workers in the Showa era supposedly received bonuses worth 16 months of salary per year.”