Monthly Archives: June 2012

Beginner Buddhism Part Five: Making a home altar

This is the fifth video in the little web-series I’ve been making lately: I tried to change up the recording a bit (moved my iphone to horizontal, not vertical) among other things little tricks. Getting more familiar with iMovie lately. … Continue reading

Posted in Buddhism, Religion | 2 Comments

A Brief History of Confucianism in Korea

Not too long ago I posted and article about Neo-Confucianism in Edo Period Japan (1600-1868). Very exciting stuff, I assure you. This article is to balance things out with a look at the same time period in Korea and how … Continue reading

Posted in Confucius, Korea, Religion | 2 Comments

Living With Pests

As readers may recall, I am afraid of spiders. Really afraid.1 But because I live in a house, I have to live with them a lot, especially in my garage. My garage has some junk and furniture left by the … Continue reading

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Big Bang and 2NE1 on Japanese TV

Credit goes to my wife for finding these, but we like to watch Japanese TV on the Internet, and she knows a lot of TV shows I don’t. One show is called しゃべくり007 (shabekuri 007), which is a variety show … Continue reading

Posted in Japanese, KPop, Language, Music | Tagged , | Leave a comment

No Really, This Too Shall Pass

(Just dust in the wind, dude) A few months back, I had a powerful feeling of nostalgia. Before our daughter was born my wife and liked to play computer games: Halo, Diablo 2, Age of Empires (my wife always play … Continue reading

Posted in Buddhism, Dune, Religion | Tagged | 9 Comments

Beginner Buddhism Part Four: The Sutras

Thanks to everyone for their generous support and encouragement. It’s greatly appreciated. Here’s part four of the series on Beginner Buddhism: This shows the Buddhist sutras and tries to address some issues about their origins, how they’re read and such. … Continue reading

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Cute Pictures by my Daughter

I just felt like posting a few pictures my daugther made: This drawing is something she made a couple months ago. It is hanging on my wall at work. She is eating a strawberry with her friend and they’re talking … Continue reading

Posted in Family, Japanese, Language | 4 Comments

Fun with Kids and Latin

My daughter is a language nerd like her father. She proudly counts to 20 in French at home, over and over again.1 She also likes to use Korean when we go to our local H-Mart store, and she likes to … Continue reading

Posted in Language, Latin | 7 Comments

Heartburn, Part Two

About 2 months ago, I wrote about my recent heartburn problems. I took prescription antacid for 6 weeks to let my stomach heal, and that did help for a while. However, once the medicine was used up, the pain came … Continue reading

Posted in Health | 7 Comments

Why Get A Tattoo?

We’ve all thought about it. Maybe we did get one. I haven’t, but I have thought about. I wanted something cool and “Buddhist-looking”, like the nembutsu (南無阿弥陀仏) or something, but I never got one. While joking with my sister online, … Continue reading

Posted in Buddhism, Japan, Korea, Religion, Travel, Zen | Tagged | 8 Comments