As a bonus to those who have participated in STJ’s first translation contest, Promising Translators 2018, I have offered to give feedback on the entries. This is the second post where I will give such feedback (here is the first). Please be aware that much of what I will say in these posts has a… Read More »
As a bonus to those who have participated in STJ’s first translation contest, Promising Translators 2018, I have offered to give feedback on the entries. This is the first post where I will give such feedback. Please be aware that much of what I will say in these posts has a subjective element, and of… Read More »
Since reading (and reviewing) Yoko Ogawa (小川洋子)’s novel “Little Bird” (小鳥), I’ve been interested in exploring more of what this unique author has to offer. Just today I came across an audio narration of one of her short stories called “Hexagonal Room” (６角形の小部屋）here on Youtube, apparently from a radio talkshow. (Make sure you start listening… Read More »
This is another post in my Read & Answer series of articles where I give a short passage in Japanese followed by one or more questions to test your understanding. You can see more about this series here, and a list of the other articles in it here. This will be Level 2, which is… Read More »
In October 2016, I reviewed the site Reajer.com which produces bilingual Japanese/English E-books with detailed explanations, across a wide range of levels from beginner to advanced. It turns out that the maintainer of the site and creator of these books (Dan) has decided to make nearly all of these E-books free for the public, without requiring… Read More »
This is another post in my Read & Answer series of articles where I give a short passage in Japanese followed by one or more questions to test your understanding. You can see more about this series here, and a list of the other articles in it here. This will be Level 1, which is… Read More »
In a recent article, I mentioned how the particle を (wo or o) is usually not used in combination with other particles, except for “をも” (wo mo) which you can occasionally see in literature. However I came across another combination involving を I wanted to talk about, just to set the record straight: をば (wo… Read More »
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 »
This is another post in my Read & Answer series of articles where I give a short passage in Japanese followed by one or more questions to test your understanding. You can see more about this series here, and a list of the other articles in it here. This will be Level 2, which is… Read More »
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 »