Writing about the rainy season is a bit like tap-dancing about blancmange. You might make the imaginative leap required to understand that it's milk or cream and sugar thickened with gelatin, cornstarch or Irish moss, often flavored with almonds and that it's usually set in a mould and served cold, but you still haven't tasted it. Therefore what better way to bring you the sights and sounds of Kyoto during the rainy season, we reasoned, than to take our video camera on a little walk during a flash summer shower? As you can see in the video the rain came in sideways in sheets thick as lead, the thunder rolled, the rooftops reverberated and my jeans were wet up to the shins within seconds of leaving the house. For the smells and to experience the humidity you'll just have to come here for yourself. But in the meantime, we hope this give you a little idea of why the weather in June and July in Japan really keeps you on your toes and hence why the 100 yen umbrella market is so huge here.

J-phemism of the day: "soapland". A Japanese brothel where bathroom props mask blatant prostitution. "What seems to be the problem officer? No, no. This woman is simply giving my undercarriage a good how's-your-father. I can see where you might have got confused but on the contrary, it's a simple case of one grown adult washing another in exchange for cold, hard cash." Soapland refers to an establishment into which a (usually) male client enters and is undressed and washed by a the prostitute. He then lies on a matt and is covered in lotion. The companion then slides her body up and down the client's in an act known as "awaodori" (bubble dance). Optional oral sex may be performed on the mat, then after the "mat play" phase is complete the client and companion move to a bed for sexual intercourse. Prostitution in Japan only refers to standard penetrative intercourse but doesn't extend to oral, anal, intercrural sex and other non-coital doinkage. Of course, should the police happen to pay you a visit one evening it's not the hardest thing in the world to deny you've broken the law: Policeman You happen to be partaking in any coitus perchance would ...

Motivation: Japan’s confidence problem is a Katakana problem. Japan has one of the lowest English levels in the world. It’s lower than Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and South Korea. And North Korea. This is a huge problem for Japanese business and potential global growth. Japan is becoming known as a “mute superpower”. By why is Japan’s English level so low? Why? 1. Stringent immigration rules mean that there are very few English speakers living in Japan. Out of 2 million foreigners living in Japan, less than 100,000 are English speakers. Only 18,000 are British, like me. We’ve all heard someone say「最近、外国の人が多いな」("recently there's loads of foreigners around"). The truth is Westerners account for 0.01% of the population of Japan. 2. Lateness. Research shows that if a child becomes bilingual before he is 7 years old his pronunciation will be better and it will be easier to pick up other languages in the future. Japan’s children currently start learning English around the age of 12. By this time it is too late. 3. Katakana. This is the single biggest problem Japan faces. It hurts your writing, reading and speaking. I will argue that katakana must be banned before Japan can make big improvements at English. So, what the problem ...

Japanese euphemism of the day: "soft touch". Not, as you may expect, a word meaning "lenient". Rather, it indicates that touching the hostesses outside of the bathing suit area is a-ok. And we don't mean the changing rooms. As ever, we know what you're thinking. "Hang on a second ORAZ team," you interject, "now, is that a zone that lies outside a one-piece swimming costume or bikini you're talking about? Not because I need to know for any particular reason or anything, but more just out of curiosity. You know. This is the kind of information you pick up without any intention of ever putting it to any practical use anywhere at any time." We hear you, strangely defensive and overly-strenuously protesting your innocence reader, and we appreciate why it's an important question to ask. One of the reasons for this is that "one-piece" means "dress" in Japan. Obviously, if that was the case one must assume that would leave one's options few and far between if one wished to avoid being caught offside by the "kyabakura" referee. (FYI - Taking our cue from the professional teases in question, we'll save "kyabakura" for another installment of J-phemism of the day.) The Of Rice ...

Welcome to the first in a new series designed to help you negotiate the linguistic minefield that is modern Japan. Japanese euphemisms and misused katakana loan words are rife and likely to be thrown in a foreigner's face with the expectation that he will understand them as they are in "his language". A few years of Japanese study however, should be enough to convince you that the Japanese language proper is a lot easier to remember than the vast array of euphemisms and abbreviations that mask the seedier sides of modern Japan. Today's Japanese euphemism of the day: the "double-happy" wedding,which marks both the marriage of the doubly happy couple and the imminent arrival of their first baby. Aww, sweet! This buzz word is being used to market the increasingly common weddings of pregnant women to cornered boyfriends. "Um, excuse us for saying, Of Rice and Zen team," we can hear you interject as you wag a knowing finger in the air, "but isn't that what has traditionally been known as a shotgun wedding?" Well in a way you're right, but remember what Obi-Wan Kenobi said about everything depending on your point of view? You don't get to become a Jedi by being ...

Perhaps it's late may when the rain begins and the humidity comes with it. Kyoto's rainy season is supposed to begin in June. Nobody told Kyoto that. The air is hot and thick. It makes your breathing laboured. You feel like Ed Harris sucking up the magic pink diving juice in The Abyss. Down by the main road the fluorescent shops lights cut through the mist pretty well. But up here in the Misasagi mountains the world shrinks as white fog closes around you. Ghosts walking ahead plunge into it. The haloed streetlights up here are weaker and struggle to make a dent. One muggy evening you spot what appears to be a large centipede coiled up in your toilet. "That's odd", you remark with naivety. "I've never seen an organism quite as horrifying as that before". This too is an understatement. Pretty soon you see him around around the house and your life becomes a little sitcom called "me and my mukade". One day while you cower sleepless in a corner, clutching a tennis racket for protection, a mukade takes his last stroll around your apartment. You actually feel relieved to be able to see him. At least now you have ...

You've all seen a Hollywood movie right? You're familiar with "crunch-time", when the good guy gets one small window of opportunity in which to save the universe from the Death Star/David Lo Pan/zombie pirate hoards? You know the expression "one-shot deal", right? Well Japan is about to give that phrase a whole new meaning... Japan is a euphemistically abundant country. For example an acquaintance of mine once informed a class of teenagers that this was a photo of his friends Chris and Jane who are now engaged ("Kore wa tomodachi no kurisu to jein desu. Ima issho ni konyaku shiteimasu"). Unfortunately, as these fateful words spilled from his lips like so much rich, creamy, bilingual ambrosia, he was not aware that the word "konyaku" when spelled with the kanji 婚約 means engagment. Unfortunately, when spelled with the katakana コンヤク it means a solidified jelly made from the rhizome of a vegetable known as devil's tongue. Which is also a euphemism for masturbation. The teenage class fell into a stunned silence, daring not to laugh, when our colleague told them that his friends Chris and Jane were currently masturbating together. Which, aptly enough, is exactly how Of Rice and Zen felt when Jon ...

Anyone who's been following our Twitter or Mini-posts on the Of Rice and Zen magazine homepage will be aware that editing this page is not my only job. The shameful "I blinked and missed it twice" moment yours truly went from nobody to slightly more of a nobody by accentuating my own nobody status on Japanese TV is now available for all to snicker at on Youtube. I was at work when this aired, but thank you to the kind folk who recorded it and passed it on to me. I'm sure you'll agree there's never been a bigger waste of the miraculous technology we know and take for granted as "the Digital Versatile Disc". Now the big question: Did he look down the barrel? Didn't he? Debate will rage on and on for literally seconds. Perhaps it was the surprise of seeing a cameraman holding his camera two inches from the floor that distracted my attention away from my co-star. We at Of Rice and Zen think at least 70-80% of all shots, and by extension TV, should just be shots of walls and curtains like this. We as a culture spend too much focusing on... you know... not curtains. Being paid ...

A tiny third floor bar that show no signs of being a bar from the outside, Kazu's has become a legend by trying not to try. It's a bit like Cartmanland. The best thing about Kazu's is you can't find it. Passed on from generation to generation of foreigners living in Kyoto, once you've squeezed up a narrow, residential-looking staircase and opened a completely bare, apartment-style door you'll find inside a corridor-like room lined with candles. The walls are unpainted. The lighting is so dark that it'll take minutes for your eyes to adjust. The bar is not so much "simple" as "absent", and instead there are just a series of bottles on a counter. Imagine an illegal, unlicensed bar in rural Cyprus and you'll get the idea. The music is quiet and trance-like, the light so low you have to wonder who the barman is trying to hide from and when the resistance meeting is going to begin. The vibe is private and a little sexy. So we guess that makes it the venue for a sexy resistance meeting. More than one patron has gone overboard on the absinthe and ended up without their clothes on in this bar and when ...

Cafe la Siesta is a Spanish themed cafe in Kyoto offering a taste of the Mediterranean for homesick hispanics and interested others. Just kidding, that would actually make sense. This is Japan after all, where foreign words are legally not allowed to be used for anything approaching their original purpose. That being the case Cafe La Siesta is in fact a bar in Kiyamachi offering retro video games and beer. Now we know what the retro video game crowd are thinking right now: "retro video game systems next to beer? That's like putting the sperm bank donation counter next to the "free shot of milkshake" dispensing window!" A good point well made, young nerdling. We shared your concern. True as that may be, the consoles in this particular establishment seem to have been treated with the same care by the customers as they have been with the dedicated collectors who set up the bar in the first place. Food factoids: Cafe La Siesta have a variety of dishes such as hand-made tacos priced at 550yen, home-made soy milk bread sandwiches, healthy veggie taco rice for 700yen and original fruit cocktails starting from 600yen. You could also try the all new vegetarian menu. The games ...

Goemon is a new movie adaptation of the tale of the Japanese Robin Hood figure who has appeared in countless movies, TV shows and games throughout the years. But this time around can the Japanese movie industry's finest remix the legend enough to capture the imaginations of the world as well Kitano Takeshi did with his adaptation of the Zatoichi myth? Yes. So we've given away the ending and in doing so we've already been more postmodern than Goemon manages in its one and a half hour running time. But you can't stay mad at the movie for that because it gets so much right. Made on a shoestring budget (in Hollywood terms) the movie manages a grand scope and keeps its characters interesting and their relationships centre stage. All the fantastic action scenes are justified by the gripping narrative and never made to feel like tiresome CGI wankfests. Factoid: The Goemon legend tells of a thief who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor and was finally boiled in oil with his son by Toyotomi Hideshi. In some retellings of the tale Goemon holds his son aloft to spare him from the bubbly death. Goemon is played excellently by ...

Lets play one of Of Rice and Zen’s favourite games called “What Are We Describing?” First clue: it’s small and enigmatic like the Mona Lisa. If you guessed Paul Daniels you were close so award yourself a point. Clue number two: it was built in the 15th century, perhaps designed by painter and gardener Saomi who died in 1525, houses perhaps the most famous sekitei (rock garden) in the world and is one of Kyoto’s major draws. If you said Lotteria you were not very close so deduct your Paul Daniels bonus point. The answer is of course Ryoan-ji or “peaceful dragon” temple. Let’s take a closer look. But before we do so we feel we must warn you that the austere aesthetic beauty of Ryoan-ji’s rock garden does make the Of Rice and Zen team want to spout philosophical about the nature of aesthetics and beauty. Forewarned is forearmed. Factoid: Ryoan-ji was founded in 1450 by Hosokawa Katsumoto (1430-73) a military leader in the Muromachi period. There is a nice garden and a temple building associated with Ryoan-ji but spending any time talking about those would be akin to describing the lampshades shaking behind Peter North, so lets cut straight to the ...

It would have been hard for the ORAZ team to imagine sukiyaki before coming to Japan and even harder to imagine our experience in Japan without it. Eating a homecooked sukiyaki meal with a Japanese family for the first time was a genuine revelation. It was a flavour we'd simply never experienced before and elevated food into a new stratosphere of relevance in our lives. If we ask you to take a moment to imagine a new colour, you'll have some idea of how impossible that is. Well imagining a new flavour is in the same ball park. Factoid: Sukiyaki (すき焼き) belongs to the nabemono family of foods. "Nabe" refers to the large pot in which such dishes are cooked, like hotpots or casseroles. The beef itself is a vital ingredient but differs so widly from our only experiences of cow flesh in other countries that we weren't even aware that it could be this good. Omi-beef retails at hundreds of dollars for a few pounds of flesh (no more, no less) and is therefore often saved for special occasions like a visit from a foreigner. As per the rumours, the cows are fed on beer, massaged, given hummers and Tivo and generally ...

Unlike the majority of foreigners who live in Japan, the Of Rice and Zen team don't pollute our bodies with the flesh of unclean beasts and thus we don't stink of a beef juice sweat. We don't wash in the bath. We don't blow our noses in public and we work all the hours god sends. We are practically Japanese. But with a burger this tasty-looking even we had to fall from grace and take a break from natto, raw egg and rice for a day. So as you approach Heian-jingu in Higashiyama the giant torii gate spanning the road is a bit of eye-catcher. It's actually very hard to notice how many other cool places are in the vicinity of the gate because you can't peel your eyes off it. It's a bit like a woman telling you she gets annoyed with boys who fail to look her in the eye and instead stare fixedly at the glorious golden eagle nesting in her hair. You don't want to be a cliche, but at the end of the day it's quite an arresting sight. If you can force yourself to veer off the road to the left after the Kyoto Art Gallery ...