Today was the 6th of August, a special day for the Japanese people (I blogged about it a year ago).

Threading on this very tenuous connection, here are a few links of interest to japan-curious readers:

• Japan Pop socio-czar and unconsolable mourner of yesterdays, Marxy offers an insightful dissection of Fujiwara Masahiko’s Dignity of a Nation: ‘a book that openly calls for the end of democracy and the return of “warrior ethics.”‘ (yea, that’s what the Japanese write about when they are not busy building flying cars or giant cat-eared robots).
• Moresukine is a small webcomic documenting its author’s life in Tokyo from January to June of 2006 through a series of “assignments” submitted by his readers. It’s pretty entertaining and only ever so slightly orientalist. I found it via this guy, who used to maintain a most delightfully fucked-up repository of all things pleonastically weird and Japanese.
• Of course, the Links section above, holds even more Japanese goodness for you to peruse (both colourful words and insightful photographs).

In case you are wondering (you probably aren’t) about this sudden surge in Japan-related material: it’s not [just] me getting all mushy on a Sunday evening and missing people and places 10,000 miles away…

You see, August is also the month where one has to send in their application to take the JLPT in December. Being a glutton for punishment, and despite standing absolutely no chance whatsoever, I have decided to go for Level 2 this year. Well, I think I have. I still have three weeks of studious browsing of the Japanese web to convince myself that this money would be much better spent on cheap imported shochu.