With a title like this, I could very well write about the Palin/Beck rally participants that descended on my city this weekend… But instead I’ll stick to the (hopefully) less-polarizing topic of cupcakeries. I’m not entirely sure when the fad of cupcake-focused bakeries began sweeping America. National Geographic says: The gourmet cupcake trend really took [...]

I recently received an email that owners of the thejapanshop.com published their first Kindle ebook, a beginners’ level Japanese language text called “Hiragana, the Basics of Japanese.” They’ve asked mailing list subscribers to download the book (available for free here at least for the moment) and review it on Amazon’s website. I haven’t loaded the [...]