Derek Wessman Blog
Careful, insightful, personal writing. Focuses on simple pleasures and the finer things in life.
インディー通信 Indie Tsushin
J/E bilingual blog with dev interviews, coverage of games off the beaten path, streams/videos, and zines—lots of cool stuff.
J-En Translations
Posts about J to E translation from an industry vet. The site has a podcast too, featuring interviews with other people in the translation industry.
Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster
Highly frequent posts about retro games.
Language Log
Long-running blog with lots of interesting tidbits on language and linguistics. Check out the blogroll on this site for a heap of other language-related blogs too.
Midnight Reading
Personal blog from one of the people working on Indie Tsushin above.
No-sword Zoku
Japanese language, literature, and more. I can’t remember how exactly, but I came across this blog when I started learning Japanese and I have always looked up to the person who writes it.
Scripting Japan
Posts on Japanese language, slang, and other areas of sociolinguistics.
Separated by a Common Language
A blog focusing on the differences between UK and US English. I really appreciate this blog because there are very few resources like it.
shmupulations
Treasure trove of translated dev interviews from the 80s and 90s.
The Baffler
Magazine that covers a highly broad range of topics (generally US-focused though).
The Taishō Café
Insight on Japanese popular culture from a translator.
Things Of Interest
Computer programming, science fiction, and lots of other cool stuff.
考える人
Japanese online mag from the publisher Shinchosha.
日本語練習虫
Japanese blog from an independent researcher studying the history of printing and typography in Japan.
文学通信 (Bungaku Report)
Japanese site with news about Japanese language and literature research, events, publications, and more.
LibriVox
Free, public domain audiobooks. I like to put on this reading of Moby Dick and this reading of Dubliners now and again.
Life Science Dictionary
A very cool JA↔EN dictionary with a whole host of medical terms. Useful when going to the doctor in Japan!
newStage
User-submitted shmup news timeline, with upcoming release dates in a sidebar (in Japanese).
Shmups Wiki
The digital library of shooting games.
A History of the World in 100 Objects
Maybe you’ve already heard it or read it, but this was a nice series. I enjoyed listening to it while going to and from university—maybe I’ll listen to it again sometime.
Lives Less Ordinary (BBC World Service)
A lot of interesting stories from around the world. I used to listen to this when it was called Outlook but I kind of fell off from it because I felt there was a strong editorial tone focusing on the importance of forgiveness, which didn’t quite gel with me at the time!
The Essay (BBC Radio 3)
I really like this series. Each episode is 15 minutes, and they come in sets of five, with one released each weekday. The podcast RSS doesn’t always feature all the episodes, so I’d recommend checking the linked website above or listening to it in the BBC Sounds app.
New Music Fix (BBC Radio 6)
Daily selection of cool music, plus weekly artist interviews. I like the banter between Tom Ravenscroft and Deb Grant. I enjoy their taste in music, and I like to put this show on while I work. This one isn’t available as a podcast, sadly—you need to listen to it in your browser on in the BBC Sounds app.
いんぱくPodcast
Japanese podcast from the Printing Museum in Tokyo. I keep meaning to listen to this but I never get round to it!