Happy New Year!

Sorry this post is so late. But happy new year everyone! I hope everyone had a good holiday, and is looking forward to an amazing new year.

Because it's the new year I just wanted to talk about some of Japan's New Year traditions. In Asian cultures New Years is an important holiday, and there's a lot of cool things to learn about this festive time. What I found that was super interesting was in Japan they have a "Coming of Age Day" which is help on the second Monday of January. This holiday is for those that just turned 20 in the past year, celebrating their transition to adulthood.

According to Wikipedia "Festivities include coming of age ceremonies (成人式seijin-shiki) held at local and prefectural offices, as well as after-parties among family and friends." Often these young adults go drinking that night as well, as expected. Ladies will usually wear kimonos or traditional formal wear, while most men wear a suit, some do don on the traditional dress.


-From dailymail.co.uk


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Anime Adventure: Ghost Hunt

Hi guys, I know I haven't posted anything in awhile, but here I am! I know its the new year, I am planning to write a post about Japanese culture concerning this holiday time, but it is taking me a little while to actually be able to research it, so please be patient with me.

Anyway, I just finished the anime series Ghost Hunt. Its an older anime, produced in 2006-2007. It's about a girl named Mai Taniyama age 16, who works with the Naru (real name is Kazuya Shibuya) who is the president of Shibuya Psychic Research, even though he is only 17 years old. Together they solve mysteries and exorcise spirits with their crew of a Naru's assistant, Koujo Lin, Monk (Actually named Houshou Takigawa), John Brown (an Australian Preacher), Ayako Matsuzaki (a shrine priestess), Masako Hara (a young famous medium), and later in the series Yasu, a high school research student.

The Main Crew (from left to right: Mai, Naru, Monk, Ayako, Lin, Masako, John)

Yasu

Honestly, the supernatural is not exactly something I'm too interested in, especially because I'm easily scared and even though it's an anime sometimes it feels too real. But this one is not as scary as some of those RPG video games (cough*Until Dawn* cough) and so I watched the entire thing. Each arc is a case, usually around 3-4 episodes long. It's kind of nice because its in chunks, but at the same time, if you didn't exactly want to end on a certain case, watching an entirely new case can be time consuming. Granted, each episode is only 20 minutes long so two cases is about 3 hours, but still. Time consuming. 

All in all its a really interesting, short series, only 1 season, 25 episodes long. I really liked all the characters, especially Yasu. Its a shame he came near the end of the series because he's so hilarious, and somewhat sarcastic. He's the one that made me laugh the most. Then there's the whole group of them, that don't all get along but eventually turn into a family which was very heart warming especially after the scary parts. 

My only problem with it, is that Mai is a potential psychic, but it is never fully explained. My friend who introduced me to this show also read the manga, and she told me that the manga explains it much better than the anime. So if you really want to find out I would suggest checking out the manga. It is not much longer than the anime, supposedly there is just one last case that is in the manga that the anime did not cover. 

If you're looking for a supernatural anime with ghosts and spirits, but not overly scary, this is probably your best bet. :)

Keep smiling,

-Cami