About the Author
Hello, this blog is about my life as a father, Buddhist and Japanophile / Koreaphile. Any useful information I can pass along will hopefully make the Internets a better place. Thanks for reading!
The JKLLR on Twitter
- Rocking out at work to T-ara's "Lovey Dovey". youtube.com/watch?v=whL-2s… 12 hours ago
- Good luck pencils I bought in Japan, for language study. instagr.am/p/PKISZWi7l8/ 15 hours ago
- The greatest collaboration ever. I purchased this in Tokyo at a King Tut exhibit. instagr.am/p/PJ8BwlC7ul/ 16 hours ago
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Monthly Archives: July 2009
Words from Jung
Nothing really important here, but I was reading about Dr. Carl Jung on Wikipedia, and I found some quotations there I thought worth sharing: I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers … Continue reading
Posted in Buddhism
2 Comments
Aisatsu: a Zen Buddhist “greeting”
Here’s a random cultural fact about Japanese and Zen. In Japanese, the word commonly used for “greeting” is aisatsu (挨拶). However, a while back, I read in my cultural guidebook, that the word was originally used in Zen Buddhism to … Continue reading
Posted in Buddhism, Japanese, Zen
2 Comments
The Sekimon Shingaku Movement
As mentioned recently, I’ve been reading certain articles from George J. Tanabe Jr’s Religions of Japan in Practice, including one about the sekimon shingaku (石門心学) movement in Japan. According to Janine Anderson Sawade, who wrote the particular essay, the movement … Continue reading
Posted in Buddhism, Japan, Philosophy, Shinto, Zen
5 Comments
Grow up
Yet another funny comic from Xkcd: (Click for larger image) I believe I mentioned this in the past, but the Zen priest, Kosho Uchiyama, in his book Opening the Hand of Thought, had talked about how a lot of people … Continue reading
I only know what I know
Lately, I’ve been reading the excellent compilation of articles on Japanese religion by George J. Tanabe Jr, called Religions of Japan in Practice, among other things.1 It is a hefty tome, but has lots of interesting articles about lesser-known aspects … Continue reading
Posted in Buddhism, Zen
2 Comments
Listening to a foreign language
I found this great quotation from a Roger Zelazny classic, Doorways in the Sand, which I’ve been re-reading lately.1 In this chapter, the main character Fred, is listening to two aliens having a conversation about him in their native language: … Continue reading
Posted in Japanese, JLPT, Language, Zelazny
2 Comments
Killing time the ancient Japanese way
My wife likes to read Japanese blogs a lot, and often the blogs have names with word つれづれ (徒然 tsure-dzure) in there. I asked her what this meant and she stated it was hard to explain, but after seeing a … Continue reading
Posted in Japan, Japanese
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Japanese Life Expectancies, Food
For another year, Japanese women have the longest life-span of any people in the world. Interestingly, among the top of longest-living groups of women in the world, some were Asian, some European. America obviously was somewhat lower. Given that my … Continue reading
Posted in Cooking, Health, Japan
13 Comments
Tathagatagarbha: the womb of Buddhahood
This is one of those concepts in Buddhism that really, really confused me for a long time but thought I’d expand on it a bit. After finishing some readings on Yogacara Buddhism, I turned my attention back to an old … Continue reading
Posted in Buddhism, Jodo Shinshu, Shingon
2 Comments
Japanese Yojijukugo
So, lately, on Japanesepod101.com, I’ve been exploring some of the supplemental lesson tracks like onomatopoeia and now yojijukugo. The term yojijukugo (四字熟語) refers to special 4-character phrases in Japanese, that according to JPod101, are often of Chinese origin and sometimes … Continue reading
Posted in Buddhism, Japanese
2 Comments