I participated in Famicase again this year. This year's game is Unicorn Gumball, and here's the description: 時は25XXUT(ユニコーン・タイムライン)。群れは落ち着かない。角は輝きを失い、魔法の森に影が伸びる。ユニ コーン一族の生存と魂は危機に瀕している。しかしあなたは試練に立ち向かう。そしてガムボールを作るのだ。 ベリーベリー、ロッキーロード、夏嵐、泥炭などの人気…
There goes another year. Here are some things that happened in 2025: I used this image of a lotus from Shinobazu Ike in Ueno for the cover of my book. After getting into photography thoroughly last year, I focused on flower photos this year…
There are many notable hundredth anniversaries in 2025. This year marks the origin of Hey Song, Taiwan's singular sarsaparilla; Kewpie Mayonnaise, known for its tang and naked dolls; Bontan Ame, a railway kiosk staple with gentle pomelo fla…
Another year, another Famicase. This time my submission, THE現代蟐挧語辞典, is a callback to my ghost characters article, using them for good effect. 勉強・日常生活・観光・専門家に必要な3万語以上収録！ 最近人気の旅先である蟐挧特異区域の言葉のみならず、 地図・習慣・祭事・物理法則の違いの徹底紹介も。 初回限定版にはレシピ集の小冊子も付録。
This year I participated in the Global Game Jam at the Okutama Site for the third time. While I go to the Okutama site every time, each year the actual location in Okutama is a little different, and this time we went to Nippara. Once a smal…
2024 was a definitely a year. Here are some things that happened: I managed to do a good job of travelling this year, taking frequent short trips. I wasn't as good about it as last year, partly due to some health issues in the summer, but t…
The Japanese language has a unique orthography which presents many challenges to technology. Dealing with those challenges, and making computers easier to use with Japanese, is a major focus of my work. The articles here cover both tools I'…
Since last summer I've been working on a book about Japanese Natural Language Processing. I'm writing it in Markdown, and publishing chapters simultaneously in Japanese and English. I was surprised to not find many tools for to support this…
While visiting Kyoto and Osaka in December last year I was able to attend the Berserk exhibit, which featured hundreds of original pages from the manga. At the end of the exhibit was a reconstruction of Miura's working space, with many of t…
When you open a document with an encoding different than the one it was created with, it's not possible to display the original text, and instead a garbled mess of corrupted characters are printed out. These are called "mojibake" in Japanes…
I'm working on a book about Japanese Natural Language Processing with Masato Hagiwara. Introduction to Japanese Language Processing will be available in Japanese and English and preorders should open this month. A crop of the amazing cover
Last month I released Kanji Club, a kanji search site with a unique interface. It scratches an itch I'd had for a long time and the response on Twitter was encouraging. Ever run into a kanji where you recognized the parts it's made of but d…