The 37th World Expo is currently being held in Osaka (大阪), Japan, from April to October this year. This is only the fourth World Expo to...

A golden barrel cactus, known in Japanese as キンシャチ (kinshachi) or 金鯱 in kanji As the first Europeans to make contact with the Japanese,...

As the first Europeans that the Japanese encountered, the Portuguese made a deep cultural impact on the Land of the Rising Sun. Many...

福砂屋 (Fukusaya) logo incorporates a Portuguese ship. I wrote last year about the delicious Japanese castella cake  (カステラ) that originated...

The Emmy Awards nominations caused a stir last month, July 2024, when Shōgun (将軍) topped the list with 25 nominations including best...

文明堂's beautiful wrapping paper showing a Portuguese man with a servant. A few months ago I wrote a post about how the Portuguese...

It was Halloween recently and pumpkins were suddenly all over the place. My son's friend Kenji, whose father is Japanese, came for a...

The Catholic Church's World Youth Day that just ended on August 6 saw thousands of pilgrims from all across Asia travel to Portugal. One...

This year, 2023, will see Japan and Portugal celebrate 480 years of relations between the two maritime countries at opposite ends of the...

Although the Japanese became more deeply familiar with the Dutch language (Western knowledge was called 蘭学 rangaku or "Dutch studies"),...

Arriving from southern China, the Portuguese were called "Southern Barbarians" (南蛮) by the Japanese. These barbarians brought lucrative...