I was very fortunate to get 89 responders for my first WordPress poll, “Why are you studying Japanese?”. (Thanks everyone!) In this post I’ll analyze the results. (The poll is here and it will remain open so if you haven’t responded, please consider doing so. If the results change appreciably I’ll do another article analyzing… Read More »
I recently got a request from someone asking for usage and example sentences of the Japanese expression まし, so I thought I would write a brief post on that topic. まし is used when you want to express something is not great in an absolute sense, but relatively better when compared to something else. You… Read More »
For me, one of the attractions of studying and becoming fluent in a foreign language is the concept of thinking in a language other than my native tongue. I’m not talking about just speaking in a foreign language without first forming the thoughts in one’s native language, but also the ability to follow a chain… Read More »
I’m normally not one for recycling things presented by others, as I like to create my own content or at least present a different angle. But this video I about Japan that I caught sight of was so awesome I just had to reblog it. The sites of Japan are of course awesome, but even… Read More »
As most people who have studied a little Japanese know, じゃない is an expression in Japanese that means “is/are not” and is be the opposite of だ (the copula, or “is”). In this post I’ll go over a few different ways to use じゃない. (じゃない happens to be an abbreviation of “ではない”, though that isn’t related… Read More »
In this blog I typically like to focus on a series of expressions or words for each post, but for once I’d like to dedicate an entire article to a single expression: そろそろ。 I was reading the other day in someone’s blog about how some words take several hearings to ‘stick’ in the mind, and… Read More »
Sometimes, when you first run across a new foreign language expression your initial impression is that it’s rarely used, but days later you start seeing it crop up all over the place. The focus of today’s post is one such construct, at least for me. This expression builds off the fact that ない （無い）, which… Read More »
As part of my regiment of Japanese self-study, I try keep myself surrounded by as many Japanese things as possible: books, movies, magazines, you name it. This also extends to martial arts, and after some research I decided Aikido was the right Japanese one for me. Aikido is written in Japanese as 合気道 , and… Read More »