Monthly Archives: January 2014

The diversity and “domainness” of language

When studying any foreign language, there are many things one has to learn and grow accustomed to: pronunciation, grammar, and characters, to name a few.  In my study of Japanese I feel that I have a fairly good grasp of many of these things, not necessarily to the degree of what I would call ‘fluent’,… Read More »

Oblivion Island: Haruka and the magic mirror

I stumbled upon this Japanese CG movie by chance, having picked it up from a store credit received due to faulty headphones. The title sounded interesting, and the screenshots on the back of the box, while small, looked pretty good quality. It was produced for Fuji TV’s (a major Japanese broadcast company) 50th anniversary, and… Read More »

Three confusing Japanese words

Japanese has several words which contain opposing meanings and these can be tricky to understand at first. As always, the key to unlocking their meaning is context. I’ll discuss these with examples of both opposing meanings. やっぱり (Yappari, also written as やはり or abbreviated as やっぱ) This word is more frequently written using hiragana, but learning… Read More »

Festival at Ichimura Japanese Gardens (South Florida)

Yesterday me and my family stopped by the Ichimura Japanese Gardens in Miami, Florida, where we heard they were holding a Japanese festival. These gardens are located right next to Miami’s “Jungle Island” Zoo, the latter of which has been around for 75 years. I was first surprised when I discovered the Ichimura gardens because… Read More »

The right way to use subtitles when studying Japanese

In a recent post I commented how bad of an idea it is to use English subtitles when watching Japanese TV shows. When doing so, your brain gets lazy and stops trying to process the stream of Japanese, or at least reduces focus on it. Having said that, there is a way to use subtitles… Read More »

Popular Japanese series: Heartbroken chocolatier (失恋チョコラティエ)

It’s been a while since I’ve sat down and watched a Japanese drama, but I decided to watch the first episode of a drama that is pretty popular in Japan now. Not only does it star some actors that I like, but it involves a theme very dear to my heart – sweets. This drama… Read More »

Tricky Japanese loanwords

Loanwords, or those borrowed from another language (外来語), are used very frequently in Japanese. Those originating from English words are especially common, and this is a boon for all us studying this very challenging language. A majority of these can be understood with a glance, and are easy to remember as well. However there is… Read More »

“Becoming” in Japanese: the many uses of なる (naru)

なる is one of those super useful Japanese verbs that has many common uses, even for beginners to the language. This verb generally means “to become” and is used in the following pattern: [object] が [condition] に なる where the [object] here will become (turn into, change into, progress into) the [condition]. Let’s start with… Read More »

The wonders of Japanese particle も(mo): different ways to say “also” [intermediate]

も is one of the first particles that is typically taught, and with good reason. Not only does it have a variety of common uses, but they tend to be pretty easy to understand and use, unlike は/が which take considerably more time to master. Just make sure you don’t confuse も with もう (already),… Read More »

Shimajiro and Benesse’s distance learning program for kids

For those of us raising a child bilingual Japanese/English child, it can be difficult to find appropriate teaching materials, especially if you live outside of an area with a large Japanese population like California and New York. Fortunately, these are a few excellent distance learning (通信教育)programs designed for young learners in mind. Benesse’s “Child Challenge”… Read More »