Monthly Archives: February 2014

What if your blog could get 20x more viewers for a day? [Aside]

Regardless of  your motivations behind blogging – communicate with friends, self-expression, business/moneymaking, I’d wager that there are very few people who wouldn’t enjoy a boost in viewers. More people checking out your blog translates to more potential likes, comments, and followers. I’ve been running this blog only a few months, and have gotten great feedback… Read More »

What to say in Japanese when you don’t know what to say

Studying a foreign language, there are many times when you get stuck and just don’t know what to say. Sure, you can just mutter a “ちょっと待って” (wait) and clam up for a few seconds to think, but that would set you apart from what a native would do in similar circumstances. It’s best to give… Read More »

Don’t be fooled by translations

In one of my other blog posts, I mentioned how watching subtitles when studying a foreign language is a bad idea because your brain stops paying attention to the details of the language and takes the easy route to comprehension. There’s actually another major reason to avoid subtitles which I’ve decided to devote this post… Read More »

20 Century Boys: An amazing Japanese comic series

When reading fiction in Japanese, I usually stick to novels over manga (comic books) for several reasons. One is that manga is typically very expensive, with a single episode typically costing 10 dollars or more. Depending on the difficulty level, I can read through one of those in a few hours to a few days.… Read More »

いい (ii): A very ‘good’ Japanese word

The Japanese word いい (also 良い or よい), roughly translated as “good,” has a variety of uses making it a “good” word indeed. It can be used to mean something that is morally “good,” of good quality, or sufficient in some way. In this post I’ll go through a bunch of ways to use this… Read More »

Some hints about Japanese pronunciation

Normally I try to stay away from writing about pronunciation too much on a text blog – after all using words you can only say so much about how things sound. Some things are best learned in person, or at least with an audio blog or podcast (which I may try to do someday). But… Read More »

でしょう / だろう (deshou/darou) in Japanese

でしょう is one word I remember reading about in a Japanese textbook and not quite grasping it’s meaning immediately. だろう is it’s less-polite counterpart but to simplify things I’ll be focusing on でしょう for most of this article. I’ll try to explain their usage and nuances in as simple a way as possible, without resorting to any… Read More »

Restaurant Review: ‘Osho’ at San Francisco International Airport

Normally one doesn’t expect too much in the way of quality food in Airport restaurants, but I found one that was surprisingly good on a recent business trip. It’s called ‘Osho’, and is located in the San Francisco Airport. The name comes from ‘王将’ which is the name of the ‘King’ piece in Japanese chess… Read More »

The Japanese question particle, か (ka)

Many of the Japanese particles are not easily understood by foreigners studying the language, but fortunately there are a few that are quite simple to grasp and use. か、sometimes called the question particle, is one of these (along with も). As you might expect, this particle is sometimes used when asking a question. It is… Read More »