Monthly Archives: March 2018

Promising Translators 2018 (Japanese Translation Contest): only two weeks left

Two weeks ago I announced “Promising Translators 2018”, Self Taught Japanese’s first ever translation contest which is a JP-EN fiction contest targeting amateur translators. The winner will receive a monetary prize, and there be other prizes given as well. This post is a quick reminder for those who are interested since there are two weeks… Read More »

Japanese word comparison: yaru (やる) vs suru (する), two ways of ‘doing it’.

The Japanese verbs する (suru) and やる(yaru) are used quite frequently in the Japanese language, and while both of these mean “to do”, they have different usage. Let’s start with two general rules to help distinguish between these two verbs. First, する is more often used together with a noun to describe some action: 今晩、一緒に練習しましょう… Read More »

Japanese literature reading mobile app review: “Sukima Dokusho” (すきま読書)

Those interested in Japanese novels and short stories have a variety of free options available: sites like Aozora Bunko (青空文庫) which contain older titles and “Shousetsu wo yomou” (小説を読もう) which cater to newer ones. While it’s relatively simply to just pull up stories from such sites on your desktop machine, I think many readers out… Read More »

Promising Translators 2018 (Japanese Translation Contest): three weeks left

Last week I announced “Promising Translators 2018”, Self Taught Japanese’s first ever translation contest, which involves translating a few pages of Japanese fiction into English. The winner will receive a monetary prize, and there be other prizes given as well. This post is a quick reminder for those who are interested that there are three… Read More »

A simple explanation of the particles wa (は) vs ga (が)and the surprising equation “1+1=2”

I’ve dedicated a great deal of my time to having a good understanding of Japanese grammar, and proper usage of the particles “wa” and “ga” is one of the tricker areas. I’ve written some posts on this topic, and you can find many others if you google around. I am not going to go into a… Read More »

Japanese Translation Contest Announced: Promising Translators 2018

Update: the contest has been closed to submissions and the winners have been announced. I will likely have another similar contest, so please check back later. If you are interested in future contests, please like or comment this post, or send an email to “selftaughtjapanese.contests [at] gmail.com” about what type of contest you’d like to see. … Read More »

Self Taught Japanese’s first voice interview (with John Sensei of Manga Sensei)

The other day, John Sensei of Manga Sensei contacted me and invited me to do an interview for his podcast. At first I hesitated, feeling a little nervous since this was the first time I would be giving a voice interview, not to mention that part of it would be in Japanese. But in the… Read More »