samurai in modern america

beyond the samurai diaries

Discoveries

Other posts from Japan — on America, the UK, food, and the questions in between.

Independence Day

Happy 250th Birthday America! 🎉 Tokyo is celebrating with you tonight with beautiful fireworks light…

Independence Day

An eagle and a crane DANCED over Tokyo tonight!! 🦅🕊️

Independence Day

HAPPY 250TH BIRTHDAY AMERICA!! 🎉🎆

Independence Day

Mt. Fuji and the Statue of Liberty raised a toast over the Pacific tonight!! 🗻🗽

Independence Day

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!! 🇺🇸🤝🇯🇵

Independence Day

Japanese fireworks masters built ONE shell just for America’s 250th birthday.

Independence Day

AMERICA TURNS 250 TODAY!!! 🎆

Independence Day

In America, on one night in July, the entire country becomes a single audience.

Independence Day

Elon said hop on. The samurai brought a sparkler.

Independence Day

Tokyo Tower called the Statue of Liberty tonight!! 10,000 km!! She picked up on the FIRST RING!! 📞🎆

Independence Day

Japan vs USA friendship game: 250–250. A tie. 🏀

Independence Day

HAPPY 250TH BIRTHDAY AMERICA!! 🇺🇸🎆

Independence Day

A Harley and a Shinkansen raced under 250 firework arches tonight!! 🏍️🚄🎆

Independence Day

How big is Fourth of July

Thank You, America

My father cried.

Thank You, America

NOBODY tells Americans this part of the story.

Thank You, America

Most Americans DON’T EVEN KNOW this. Japan will scream it forever:

Thank You, America

March 11, 2011.

Thank You, America

STOP SCROLLING. Japan needs to tell you something.

Thank You, America

CONFESSION: A grown Japanese man SOBBED at YOUR fireworks last night.

Thank You, America

TOMODACHI.

Thank You, America

82%.

Thank You, America

Did you know?

Thank You, America

24,000 troops.

Thank You, America

ARIGATO.

Thank You, America

2011: America charged through the waves to save Japan.

Thank You, America

Operation Tomodachi.

Questions for America

Be honest with me, Americans 🇺🇸

Questions for America

I want to understand America properly 🇺🇸

Questions for America

I always thought America was one country 🇺🇸

Questions for America

Genuine question for Americans 📏

Questions for America

Quick poll for Americans only 🇺🇸

Questions for America

Hello from Japan 🇯🇵👋

Questions for America

Americans, I need the lore 🇺🇸

Questions for America

Hello from Japan 🇯🇵👋

Questions for America

Someone on X said they moved from California to Tennessee

Questions for America

Americans, teach me 🇺🇸

Questions for America

My American friends on X won’t shut up

Questions for America

This broke my Japanese brain 🧠💥

Questions for America

Poll for Americans 🥶

Questions for America

Quick one.

Questions for America

This broke my Japanese brain 🏈

Questions for America

I’m starting to think America isn’t one country 🇺🇸

Questions for America

Americans, poll time 🇺🇸

Questions for America

The bill was $577.

Questions for America

Americans, I need the lore 🇺🇸

Questions for America

Americans, I surrender 🌡️

Questions for America

Dangerous question for Americans 🇺🇸

Questions for America

Honest question 🇺🇸

Questions for America

I keep seeing two different Americas online.

Questions for America

Hot take from Japan 🇺🇸

Questions for America

Americans, settle this for me 🧊

Questions for America

Americans, I need to fact-check something 🚑

Questions for America

Poll for Americans 🥶

Questions for America

I’m Japanese and I’ve never

Questions for America

Wait so America is ONE country

Questions for America

Something I noticed on American Twitter:

Questions for America

At American football games on TV,

Questions for America

Americans, genuine culture shock 🇺🇸

Questions for America

Genuine question from Japan.

Questions for America

Americans, teach me the North vs South thing 🇺🇸

Questions for America

Hot take from Japan 🔥

Questions for America

I watched an American movie last night 🍿

Questions for America

Okay this might sound silly but… 🤔

Questions for America

Be honest with me, Americans 🇺🇸

Questions for America

My image of American high school

Questions for America

Americans, this blew my mind 🇺🇸

Questions for America

Americans, this fascinates me 🗣️

Questions for America

Hot take from Japan 🍔🔥

Questions for America

Americans, teach me one word: “deductible” 🇺🇸

Questions for America

Someone told me going to a gun range

Questions for America

I asked an AI to make a cute map of all 50 US states 🗺️

Questions for America

Guys, I need to talk about American portion sizes because they are actually unhinged 😂

Questions for America

Is the county fair still a big deal

Questions for America

American TV confused me again.

Questions for America

Let me guess America — and correct me 🇺🇸

Questions for America

Is the “everyone knows everyone” small town

Questions for America

Help me understand America 🎓

Questions for America

Last question for tonight.

Questions for America

Summer in Japan: 28°C inside, fan on, survive 🥵

Questions for America

Genuine culture shock, Americans 🍼

Questions for America

Americans, this can’t be real 🎓

Questions for America

How do you allocate impulse?

Questions for America

Sunday in America = NFL?

Questions for America

American mothers don’t ask how you’re feeling.

Questions for America

Sanctuary New York. From the Department of Homeland Security.

Questions for America

Okay America, explain this 🚗

Questions for America

California released 4,561 criminal illegal aliens since January 2025.

Questions for America

I want to know how other cultures handle this, because in Japan we have a whole system for it.

Questions for America

In America, “How are you?” is just a hello.

Questions for America

Hot take from Japan 🍔🔥

You can ride a bicycle across six Japanese islands.

About 400 years ago in Edo Japan

Harvard University called it a miracle.

In Japan, the public restroom is free,

For a few weeks every spring, a hillside in Japan turns the exact color of the sky.

Even without pandas, Japan’s got red pandas that are like 100 times cuter. https://t.co/uShcZQTqHe

In the far west of Japan, there’s a bridge that looks photoshopped. It isn’t.

Japan destroys its most sacred shrine every 20 years.

Many countries are tourist destinations.

Help me understand something, because to me this feels essential and I cannot tell if the rest of th…

Once a day, for about half an hour, a quiet beach in Japan turns into a perfect mirror.

Take a fifteen-minute ferry from Hiroshima and an island of rabbits will come running to greet you.

Japan has a sandbar so perfect people bend over backward just to see it right.

You wanted to be a ninja when you were eight. Japan never stopped taking that seriously.

Most waterfalls, you admire from the front.

Japan has a desert — and it sits right beside the Sea of Japan.

People say Japan should become “more normal.”

There is a place in Japan where wild monkeys soak in hot springs while snow falls on their heads.

For about two weeks in late April, two tunnels turn into waterfalls of flowers.

Most countries build hot springs.

Wait — this water is so clear it has its own name in Japanese.

In Japan you can pay a monk to hit you with a stick, and tourists are lining up for it.

In winter, you can walk on the frozen ocean off the coast of Hokkaido.

For about two weeks a year, a mountain pond slowly opens a giant blue eye.

There’s a little train station in Japan with no ticket gate and no shops — just a wooden bench, and …

There’s a bridge in Japan so blue it looks painted into the sea — and you can drive across it for fr…

About four dollars.

Okay so I have to tell you about this.

Imagine walking 750 meters into a mountain — and coming out somewhere that feels like a dream.

In Japan, when you travel…

There’s a town in Japan where every house keeps a boat on the ground floor — the way yours keeps a c…

Wait — that whole bridge is woven from vines, and they rebuild it by hand every three years.

Everyone thinks a sumo wrestler is just a big guy who eats a lot. Watch one morning of practice and …

Wait — that’s not the sky.

Japan has an entire train station

Once a day, for about half an hour, a quiet beach turns into a perfect mirror.

Japanese Manners

To those thinking of moving to Japan,

Japanese Manners

In Japan, no one tips.

Japanese Manners

A 7-year-old boy gets on a train in Tokyo. Alone.

Japanese Manners

A young man, barely more than a boy, completed the bagging of my provisions. Then he reached for the…

Japanese Manners

In Japan, almost no civilian owns a firearm.

Japanese Manners

When a Japanese person wants to leave, here’s what we say.

Japanese Manners

Look at Japan.

Japanese Manners

In Tokyo, it is ordinary to see a seven-year-old board a train alone with a yellow safety cap and a …

Japanese Manners

In Japan, a seven-year-old rides the train across the city. Alone.

Japanese Manners

To those considering moving to Japan, let me be honest with you.

Japanese Manners

In Japan, there are almost no public trash cans.

Japanese Manners

ただ、敬意🫡 https://t.co/WBst0gkOQ1 https://t.co/31WbG6kyhR

Japanese Manners

In Japan, there is no janitor.

Japanese Manners

Japan’s police box system exists almost nowhere else.

Japanese Manners

In Japan, people sleep on the train.

Japanese Manners

At a Japanese convenience store at 11pm, you’ll see something that should not be possible.

Japanese Manners

It looks insane.

Japanese Manners

Foreign media said they “don’t understand.”

Japanese Manners

Even after earthquakes and tsunamis killed tens of thousands of people, Japanese people did not riot…

Japanese Manners

Watch a road crew finish a lane closure in Japan and you may see workers turning to bow toward the c…

Japanese Manners

In Japan, we greet with a bow.

Japanese Manners

🚽 Japan’s public toilets are the cleanest on Earth.

Japanese Manners

One tiny thing in Japan that almost nobody notices.

Japanese Manners

I arrived at the station of gasoline, prepared to wait for the attendant. Instead, a kind-faced woma…

Japanese Manners

Nobody owns the umbrella stand by the door.

Japanese Manners

A grandmother was alive on Tuesday.

Japanese Manners

A man I had never met seized my hand, crushed it once with great warmth, looked into my eyes, and in

Japanese Manners

Look at the real builders of Japan.

Japanese Manners

Last year in Tokyo, people found about $30 million in cash on the street — and happily carried it st…

Japanese Manners

Here’s one of the quiet little joys of life in Japan.

Japanese Manners

There is a restaurant in Japan where every single waiter has dementia.

Japanese Manners

In Japan, a bow has angles.

Japanese Manners

One of the sweetest sights in Japan happens at a quiet crosswalk.

Japanese Manners

2am. Highway rest stop.

Japan, Explained

Miracle in Japan https://t.co/49vkfXxroL

Japan, Explained

In Japan, children clean their own schools.

Japan, Explained

There’s a TV show in Japan

Japan, Explained

In Japan, you sit down at almost any restaurant.

Japan, Explained

Blue bags up.

Japan, Explained

Your brain never stops telling your paralyzed legs to walk.

Japan, Explained

America, we have studied you.

Japan, Explained

Japanese tourists don’t know they’re supposed to hate Texas.

Japan, Explained

In Japan, you can drink the tap water.

Japan, Explained

No one is watching.

Japan, Explained

I returned to my dwelling to find a package resting against the door, unguarded and alone, like a we…

Japan, Explained

A guy moved to Japan

Japan, Explained

Japan didn’t invent precision.

Japan, Explained

You’re running wrong.

Japan, Explained

Japan has developed a 3D printer that can build a two-story house designed to withstand major earthq…

Japan, Explained

The average Japanese person says one word about 40 times a day.

Japan, Explained

At major train stations across Japan, a piano sits in the open hall and anyone may play it.

Japan, Explained

A Hollywood actor walked into a Tokyo izakaya. 🍺

Japan, Explained

In Japan, almost no civilian owns a firearm.

Japan, Explained

Six years.

Japan, Explained

Japan finally developed Terminator’s T-1000 material!

Japan, Explained

In Japan, there’s a chain called Saizeriya.

Japan, Explained

Every Japanese kid learns one rule

Japan, Explained

In a poor village in old Japan, there was a boy too small and too weak for farm work.

Japan, Explained

CNN once chose the 31 most beautiful places in Japan.

Japan, Explained

I don’t even know how to describe this place.

Japan, Explained

On the drive to my grandmother’s village, we passed a little wooden stand by the road.

Japan, Explained

In Japan, a bathroom stall is a sealed fortress. Floor to ceiling. A castle for one.

Japan, Explained

Look down at the yellow bumpy tiles on your train platform.

Japan, Explained

66 percent.

Japan, Explained

A Japanese engineer invented something you scan almost every day, then gave it away for free.

Japan, Explained

It’s 6:25 in the morning. Summer. A small park somewhere in Japan.

Japan, Explained

Things Japanese people say, and what they actually mean.

Japan, Explained

Japan is 1.5% of the world’s population.

Japan, Explained

Every summer, one small town in Gifu dances until sunrise. For thirty nights straight.

Japan, Explained

Japan did it again.

Japan, Explained

The next astronauts on the Moon won’t just walk.

Japan, Explained

🚨 Japan’s Legendary Service Myth Has Finally COLLAPSED!! 🚨

Japan, Explained

In Japan, you drop your wallet

Japan, Explained

In Japan, school lunch is one of the happiest little ceremonies of the day — and the children run it…

Japan, Explained

Watch what happens when a bullet train rolls into Tokyo Station.

Japan, Explained

There’s a forest in Japan

Japan, Explained

I just made a sports drink commercial! https://t.co/WnWn4FF1PO

Japan, Explained

Look down.

Japan, Explained

An old American man doesn’t explain himself.

Japan, Explained

A 25-year-old from the suburbs visits Tokyo

Japan, Explained

You buy a hot snack

Japan, Explained

After the rain, people around the world look up and see the same rainbow.

Japan, Explained

In Japan, students clean their own school.

Japan, Explained

The first time you see it,

Japan, Explained

Toyota’s newest product is not a car.

Japan, Explained

A 48-year-old man, broke and out of work, built a shed in his backyard.

Japan, Explained

In Japan, six-year-olds ride the train alone.

Japan, Explained

Frankly speaking…

Japan, Explained

This train is not touching the ground. At all.

Japan, Explained

This is about a place in Japan built for one reason. To let a child run for the first time in their …

Japan, Explained

Walk through any Japanese neighborhood

In Japan, every department store has a basement.

Most visitors arrive in Japan with a list: temples, sushi, neon nights.

$2.

Midnight In Japan, you can get a hot beef bowl at 2 AM.

In Japan, many ramen shops have no waiters.

In Nagoya, you order one coffee.

In Japan, sushi can cost $1.

In Japan, a plate of sushi can cost one dollar and still arrive fresher than what many countries sel…

Americans hear “raw egg on rice” and recoil.

In Japan, they will hand you a raw egg and tell you to eat it. Then it will become the best thing yo…

That broth looks like it is full of cream. There is not a drop of dairy in it.

Every evening, one of Japan’s happiest little traditions begins.

There are places in Japan where the best meal of your day costs less than a coffee.

In Japan, the most surprising thing about delicious food isn’t always the taste.

In Japan, train stations sell meals in boxes.

Airport food.

In America, the refrigerator has two doors,

In Tokyo there’s a tiny bakery

In Nagoya, a $4 coffee can come with breakfast.

Most steak, you chew.

In Osaka, lunch for two can still cost ten dollars.

Every evening, one of Japan’s happiest little traditions begins.

Wait — this bubbling, golden cheese dish costs about two dollars?

The best dollar you’ll ever spend might be sitting on a shelf in a Japanese convenience store.

Most countries can’t have beautiful things in public.

Americans probably freeze the second they see this.

I was just eating at my usual ramen spot when the guy next to me accidentally turned dinner into a f…

A Michelin-honored ramen shop with only twelve seats — and a bowl costs about eight dollars.

Midnight.

I wrote about free chips and salsa.

This is why people die in “small” tsunamis.

To everyone who’s been enjoying my Samurai series.

Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.

My profile icon comes from Illustkun.

📚⚔️ At last... my first campaign has reached the shelves of Kindle.

⚔️🏯 My very first Kindle book is finally out!

https://t.co/zytTtVgklg

This is what you called “slop.”

【MIRACLE SURVIVOR】

1 AM. Arkansas. A dog won’t stop barking.

He was deported once.

I’m not trying to start a fight.

Caught at the border. Released.

He was two weeks old.

One thing has genuinely surprised me.

They booed during the national anthem.

Random 2am thought from Tokyo.

May 28, 2026. Modesto, California.

Derek, 39, cracked his head on the bottom of a shallow pool.

March 19, 2026. Chicago, Illinois.

June 16, 2024. Texas.

A 12-year-old girl sneaks out to walk to the corner store.

March 12, 2026. Missouri.

3 deployments. Afghanistan.

Handcuffs.

Thirty arrests.

2008: rubble and doubt.

A siren rips the quiet.

In America, a lot of fathers never say “I love you.”

She was twenty-four.

An 18-year-old girl from New York went away to college in Chicago.

Her parents drove her to college in the fall.

He was arrested for drunk driving in March.

“I’ll kill your whole f--king family. Your children, your wife, all dead.”

Hoover Dam, 1930s.

She trusted this country.

Two immigrants met on a dark road in California, the day after Christmas.

Air cargo rules: ‘minimal containment strategy.’

Witnesses said the boy was set up to be killed because he was scheduled to testify in another murder…

The police put it in writing a year in advance: he is going to kill someone.

She walked into a German courtroom on March 6, 1981, sat down quietly in the third row, opened her p…

There is a kind of American town so small the man at the gas station knows your name, knows your fat…

She survived the war.

Four DUI arrests.

The baby was two weeks old.

4 AM. The school halls are still dark.

March 19, 2026. Chicago.

In one Virginia county, in a single recent year:

5:30 AM. Still dark.

『A Verdict Money Ignored』

A gas station in the New Mexico desert.

This country deported him in 2018.

She was eighteen.

“I just don’t want to die.”

She was forty-one.

Cable news anchor salary: often $5 million.

Read the timeline. Slowly.

Ohio ice storm.

The first law the President signed in 2025 has a young woman’s first name on it.

Three doors.

He had been told to leave.

The first time the system met her killer, he was crossing the border with no papers.

Sanctuary state. Sanctuary county. Sanctuary policy.

Her killer had a warrant out for his arrest.

Five deportations.

He had been told to leave this country.

It was called Feeding Our Future.

UK, What’s Going On?

A two-week-old infant was stabbed to death in Modesto, California.

UK, What’s Going On?

Whenever I see news reports about migrant crime in Western Europe, it makes me wonder:

UK, What’s Going On?

I don’t understand how there’s no civil war when 250,000 daughters have been raped.

UK, What’s Going On?

I thought this was Iran after an airstrike.

UK, What’s Going On?

This is NOT a conspiracy theory anymore.

UK, What’s Going On?

Hello from Japan 🇯🇵👋

UK, What’s Going On?

Hello from Japan 🇯🇵👋

UK, What’s Going On?

Even if Europeans are forced to endure without air conditioning, that energy or supply is apparently…

UK, What’s Going On?

Is it true that 75% (three-quarters) of England’s mayors are Muslim!? https://t.co/3oTjcTSsDa

UK, What’s Going On?

To our friends in Europe:

UK, What’s Going On?

Who could have imagined that in 2026, the Dark Ages would completely engulf Europe again? https://t.…

UK, What’s Going On?

Sparrow Purge → AC Purge https://t.co/sDpLKP6YnF

UK, What’s Going On?

I saw a meme that British people

UK, What’s Going On?

NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster, is deliberately framing the Northern Ireland riots as Irish citiz…

UK, What’s Going On?

I thought the EU meant everyone uses the Euro 💶

UK, What’s Going On?

Russia just fired live rounds at a retired couple’s yacht. 23 miles from Britain.

Japan Speaks Up

My hands are shaking writing this.

Japan Speaks Up

Temple after temple.

Japan Speaks Up

This Memorial Day, I want to tell you about a Japanese general most Americans have never heard of.

Japan Speaks Up

A Japanese couple, year 6 of fertility treatment. ¥500,000 per IVF cycle. Total: over ¥4M.

Japan Speaks Up

Once lost, never returned.

Japan Speaks Up

Five children waited for their mother to come home from her morning run.

Japan Speaks Up

Most countries after midnight = dead 💀

Japan Speaks Up

50,000 households headed by foreigners are getting full welfare in Japan.

Japan Speaks Up

Japan is being sold out by its own government.

Japan Speaks Up

Six years. +910,000 foreign workers.

Japan Speaks Up

Japan’s government is flooding the country with immigrants.

Japan Speaks Up

Is it okay to be angry about this? 😡😡😡

Japan Speaks Up

“I’ve lived long enough.”

Japan Speaks Up

Japan raised its foreign worker target

Japan Speaks Up

Our sacred past is vanishing in flames.

Japan Speaks Up

Bro, this is how Japan quietly dies.

Japan Speaks Up

I just want to protect my daughters.

At every World Cup, there’s one Japanese man who shows up in blue samurai armor and a topknot. His n…

☕ Packed for the American road Swipe for gear →

16oz. Stays hot. You stop getting up. Self-heating coffee mug

You grind it by hand. The morning obeys. Hand-crank coffee grinder

Warm foam. Cold foam. The cafe line, cancelled. Milk frother

6 quarts. No PFAS. The pot that outlives you. Cast iron Dutch oven

Marinate. Carry. The backyard starts on time. BBQ prep tub

Corn on the cob. Held by crocodiles. Yes. Crocodile corn holders

A gnome guards the garlic. You will buy it for that. Gnome garlic keeper

10 outlets. The desk finally has enough. Desk clamp power strip

The pillow that argues with your neck, and wins. Neck pillow for the road

3 batteries. 9 amps. They never go dead. Battery tender

5W. GPS. IP67. The coast answers back. Marine radio

1600W. Japan plug. American machines. TESSAN voltage converter