• To the new culture cops, everything is appropriation. If you’ve ever been told that you shouldn’t watch anime because you’re not Japanese, this is a must-read.

• If you follow me on Twitter, you know my site was copied by an identify thief this month, an issue that I only resolved with Crimm‘s help, since web hosts are very unhelpful. To stop this problem before it starts, WordPress has some excellent precautions for preventing theft—whether you have a WordPress site or not.

• “Pandas are the clickbait of zoo animals. They are, perhaps, keeping the fragile art of journalism alive.” This cracked me up.

• How is your ethnicity portrayed in anime? Unless you’re Japanese I’m going to go ahead and answer for you: not well.

• Melbourne assigned email addresses to trees to make it easier for people to report problems with them. Instead, they wrote the trees thousands of love letters.

• I called Wakakozake the “ultimate anime for introverts,” by which I included myself. To which pretty much all of my friends pointed out my outgoing personality as proof that I’m an extrovert. Anyway, I just found out ambiverts are a thing, so maybe that’s me.

• Next year, I’m going to Japan for the first time ever! I’ve always wanted to go, but DC is one of the furthest cities away from Tokyo and I didn’t want to spend $2k on tickets. In case you want to go, too, this is the deal I used. Anyway, I’m looking for suggestions about what to see and do and eat and sleep in Japan. I would LOVE your suggestions. Check out my Google doc and add your advice if you have any!

Photo credit: Moyan Brenn