Japanese literature review: わたしの美しい庭 (“My Beautiful Garden”) by 凪良ゆう(Yuu Nagira)
I reviewed Yuu Nagira’s novel “My Beautiful Garden”, a story about the interconnected lives of a few people facing various problems.
Category Archives: Reviews
Manga review: Oyasumi Punpun (おやすみプンプン) by Inio Asano (浅野いにお) [Volume 1]
When exploring the spacious Kinokuniya in download Portland the other day, I couldn’t decide what to buy so I ended up picking up on a whim the first episode of “Oyasumi Punpun” by Inio Asano. It has a pretty simple cover that is pure yellow, except for an embossed image on the front that I… Read More »
Review of language learning website: learnl (early MVP)
I was recently contacted by Jojo Masala, the creator of a new website for language learning, called “learnl”. He asked me if I was interested in trying it out, though he cautioned that, “It’s in it’s early days and kind of just an MVP now.” (Note: for those of you not too familiar with software… Read More »
レビュー：アマゾンのゲーム配信サービス「ルナ」 (A review of Amazon Luna in Japanese)
In this post I wrote a detailed review of Amazon’s game streaming service Luna in Japanese.
Aikido book review: 気の呼吸 (“Ki Breathing”) by 藤平信一 (Shin’ichi Tohei)
Kouichi Tohei (藤平光一) was a skilled martial artist who leveraged difficulties in his life to reach an amazing level of ability, and went on to established his own style of Aikido called Ki-Aikido, more formally known as Shin Shin Touitsu Aikido (心身統一合氣道). But he did more than simply practice physical martial arts techniques; Tohei Sensei… Read More »
Blog review: Landofnudotcom (landofnu.com)
It’s rare that I read blogs written in English about Japanese, but there is one blog I do check out pretty often so I thought I would highlight in a focused post: landofnu.com. This blog, which seems to have started in February 2011, has a variety of topics: Japanese (kotowaza and 4-letter compounds), fiction, non-fiction,… Read More »
Japanese learning app review: Skritter
In this post I review Skritter, an app designed for learning how to write in Japanese (as well as Chinese). Although I highlight a bunch of nitpicks, overall Skritter is a useful app that is worth checking out.
Excerpt of a Hayashi Fumiko story published on Books on Asia
Books on Asia was kind enough to post an excerpt of one of the stories from my recent book: “Days & Nights: Stories of classic Japanese women’s literature”, which contains my translations of Hayashi Fumiko’s fiction works.
Book Review: “Weaving Words: The Alchemy of Languages” by María Ortega García
The other day I saw a reference to María Ortega García’s book “Weaving Words: The Alchemy of Languages” (amazon link) on Twitter somewhere, and both the title and book summary sounded really interesting, so I contacted the author. She was kind enough to send me a review copy of the paper version of this book,… Read More »
Japanese literature review: “大きな鳥にさらわれないよう” (“To Avoid Being Swept Away by a Large Bird”) by 川上弘美 (Hiromi Kawakami)
I picked up “To Avoid Being Swept Away by a Large Bird” by Hiromi Kawakami for the usual reasons––an interesting description on the cover, a curious title, and a reasonable length––but reading the first few paragraphs helped me close the deal (although I admit it was more because the prose was easy to read than… Read More »