bonsai-superstar

Wow! Great! If what Goofy Internet Guy says is correct, we'll all be speaking Thai and Japanese within months! I guess there really _is_ a shortcut to this 1000-year old problem. Thanks, guy who raises people's (suckers, pictured above) expectations to an unreasonable level!

"That�s why I loved the followed video, "

Yeah, you're a real "grammar nut", alright.

From Wikipedia: Miyazaki based some of the buildings in the spirit world on the buildings in the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum in Koganei, Tokyo, Japan. He often visited the museum for inspiration while working on the film. Miyazaki had always been interested in the Pseudo-Western style buildings from the Meiji period that were available there. The museum made Miyazaki feel nostalgic, "especially when I stand here alone in the evening, near closing time, and the sun is setting �" tears well up in my eyes."Another inspiration was the historic hill towns of Jiufen and Jinguashi, both located in Taiwan, and both which also feature Meiji-period architecture that was built when Taiwan was a Japanese colony.

Thanks! More stereotypical "crazy Japan!" nonsense. As noted by Tournezagauche , many of these are parody photos, not even real. That book was a joke: the inventions are NOT REAL.
Perhaps you should question yourselves _why_ you so desperately want Japan to be such a "crazy" place.

Newsflash non-brights: this is not "everyday life in Japan”. Sorry to burst your fantasy bubble, but these are pictures of festivals, bullet trains, and anime-geek nonsense. I live and work here. Wake up & grow up.

Language Log could be interesting. However, the responses are always a d*ck-waving competition between know-it-all nitpickers. There are usually no conclusions, just a mocking of other people/cultures.

A review of Marcel Theroux's BBC Four Hidden Japan entry, "In Search of Wabi-sabi"