Nipponster Official Blog: Lafcadio Hearn Retired

Lafcadio Hearn has been retired as a hot search that is.

We reluctantly retired the Lafcadio Hearn hot search to the hot search archive.

We had to make way for new interesting hot searches, but boy were we sad to see him go :(

If you don't know who Lafcadio is you might be missing out big!

This guy was one amazing foreigner in Japan.
In fact, if it wasn't for him many of Japan's greatest folktales would not exist today.
If you want to know more about that check out this wikipedia article (I would have put the link to the February NY Times article but those greedy --- restrict access to archived articles)

Another amazing thing about Lafcadio is that he received Japanese citizenship! Okay, a show of hands how many of you can claim that? hmmm. I don't see any hands :)

He wrote a good book

<--link to the book on Google book search (I assume that it is good although I have not read it -- hey I'm a busy person). It's called Japan: An Attempt At Interpretation

I can especially relate to the chapter "Strangeness and Charm." It reminds me of my first impressions of Japan as an exchange student. Below is the page I'm talking about (hopefully you won't new a microscope to see it...