It’s been around a year and a half since I’ve started training in a martial art informally called “Ki Aikido” that was created by Koichi Tohei (藤平光一). It is formally named “Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido”, and written in Japanese as 心身統一合氣道, which literally means “Aikido of Mind and Body Unification”. The casual term “Ki Aikido”… Read More »
I’ve been an avid reader since I was young, but until high school I mostly read fantasy novels that would be considered popular fiction. In high school I was assigned to read a variety of books in various genres, but I think it’s safe to say a majority of them could be considered ‘literature’ in… Read More »
In this post I’d like to focus on the Japanese word “choudo” that can be written in hiragana as ちょうど or in kanji as 丁度. This word and I go long back since it was one of the first words I learned, and I still use it frequently many years later. Unlike some words in… Read More »
For learners of Japanese I often suggest children’s picture books because they are typically shorter, easier to understand, and have less kanji (if any) when compared to teen- or adult-oriented books. I’ve reviewed a few of them on this blog (this, this, and this). While you can learn much about Japanese language and culture from… Read More »
I’ve mentioned it before, but one of the great things about running this blog is the many interesting people I come across. In some cases, I may only exchange a few words in a post comment, but in others I may go on to have extended email conversations, or even work on a project together.… Read More »
Japanese is well known for its complex layers of politeness that involve different verbs, verb endings, and nouns, among other things. Japanese classes often focus more on the polite side of Japanese since it’s generally safer to be more polite, especially with people you don’t know well. However, many Japanese learners are also interested in… Read More »
I’ve written recently about how learning native-level pronunciation in Japanese is actually one of the more difficult parts of the language, at least for those for whom English is their native tongue. One of the first hurdles is learning how to say Japanese vowels, like “o” and “a”, that are generally deeper than their counterparts… Read More »
In recent years I’ve gradually transitioned from simply learning Japanese to becoming deeply interested in Japanese to English translation. Besides actually doing a lot of translations myself, I have been trying to understand how to talk about translation in Japanese, in particular understanding the nuances of various terms related to translation. As you may already… Read More »
As you may know, the Japanese language borrows many words from other languages. If you happen to know the original word in question this is often extremely convenient, however in some cases the meaning (or at least the nuance) of the word can be significantly changed. I’ve written a post about confusing loanwords before, but… Read More »
I’ve noticed that Japanese seems to have a large number of words that are used to describe the complete absence of something, or complete negation of something like an action. These words would generally be used in a sentence or phrase that ends in a verb in the negative tense. In English, this would correspond… Read More »