What is cute in Japanese? Japan places alot of emphasis on “cute” and from what I can tell, Korea places alot on looks too, but in its own way.  There is one thing in particular that I am not sure whether Japanese girls do on purpose because it is “cute” or if it is simply a genetic attribute.

I am talking about the o-leg which although is not something exclusive to Japan, it seems to affect a larger part of its population.

By now I think most people are very familiar with the Asian girl way of acting. And I do say Asian girl as what I am about to write about is not restricted to Koreans despite the word being Korean but can easily describe a pattern of action that “most” girls tend to take. I say most because of course, not all girls act the same way but for the sake of this blog, we must generalize.

This is quite a word. If you grew up in America then the stereotype of the “Japanese Salaryman” is really nothing new or special, but have you ever heard of people who actually die from working so much? This is another one of those only in Japan things and certainly we don’t have any word equivalent for it since it doesn’t happen here.

This is  a word I came across by reading http://maki.typepad.com/justhungry/.

干物女 refers to an unmarried woman who has given up on love (particularly sex) or being with a man. She lives for herself, does not bother with trying to look good for others, gives up the whole cutesy act and as the author claimed, even stops using bras. Oddly enough, I tend to like those kinds of women.

草食男子 & 꽂미남

This is actually quite an interesting topic. One even baffling at times. Growing up I always thought of men in Japan as being proud and quite manly, something like Toshiro Mifune. Somewhere along history, things changed. It is similar to what is happening in American now actually. With singers like Justin Bieber or Edward in Twilight.

Yaeba refers to crooked teeth. In Japan it is considered a very attractive thing actually. Girls with yaeba are seen as being more innocent and inexperienced, therefore more attractive.  It is “cute”.  We gotta remember that different cultures have different values as to what is beautiful and what is isn’t.

The world of  online communication and that of real life or academic is  quite different in terms of writing and speaking.  I have been using skype for quite a few years now, almost as early as it was introduced. In my time using it, I have met many people who are learning English and I had the pleasure of chatting with.  There were some people who I met but for some reason, I did not like them so much, I was not so sure why, they seemed like nice people, but they had a kind of “attitude” that I wasn’t so fond of.