The Adventures of “wa” + “ga”: Question Sentences
In this article I focus on the differences in using the “wa” versus the “ga” particle in the context of asking simple questions.
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Classical poem translation: “The Second of a Series of Miscellaneous Poems” (雜詩其二) by Tao Yuanming (陶淵明)
I decided to translate a poem by the 4th-century Chinese poet Tao Yuanming (陶淵明), leveraging both the original text as well as Japanese translations and explanations.
Japanese Book Review: 首里の馬 (“The Horse of Shuri”) by 高山 羽根子 (Takayama Haneko)
In this article, I reviewed the novel 首里の馬 (“The Horse of Shuri”) by 高山 羽根子 (Takayama Haneko), a book with interesting ideas that I felt fell a little short on execution.
Happy Birthday to Juza Unno (and some inexpensive classic Japanese SF)
Juza Unno (海野十三), born Sano Shouichi (佐野 昌一), is a Japanese author from the early 20th century who used his real-world technical knowledge and experience to write a great number of science fiction works, including novels and short stories. This author holds a special place for me because not only were my first and last E-books… Read More »
Japanese drama review: “Million Yen Women” (100万円の女たち)
Ever since I got a membership to Netflix as part a promotional deal, I’ve been watching little bits of anime and life-action series on there. For the most part, even if I find something that is good in the beginning, it’s never compelling enough for me to make it through the end (and this includes… Read More »
Japanese book review: 「書道」の教科書 (Calligraphy Textbook) by 横山豊蘭 (Houran Yokoyama)
A few weeks ago I began learning the art of Japanese calligraphy, which is called “shodou” (書道). I posted a lengthy article here on some of the things I discovered, and included some hints for those interested in learning shodou. Right around the time I finished that article, a book arrived that I had purchased,「書道」の教科書… Read More »
Indonesian Retranslation of “Final Days of Summer”
Back in early 2017 I translated the short fiction story “Final Days of Summer” (残夏) written by Masaki Hashiba (ハシバ柾), which you can read in full here. Recently I received a query from a person named Perzipal regarding the retranslation and online publishing of this work into the Indonesian language. To make a long story short, after… Read More »
10 things you *don’t* have to worry about when learning Japanese
All over the internet you can find discussions about why certain languages are difficult to learn, and I have seen my share of those for Japanese language. So for a chance of pace I thought I would take the opposite angle and talk about a few things that you generally don’t have to worry about… Read More »
Japanese book review: “コミュニケーションの原点は「氣」にあり！” (“Communication begins with Ki!”) by Shin’ichi Tohei (藤平信一)
I reviewed the book “Communication begins with Ki!”, the latest book by Shin’ichi Tohei, the head of the Ki Society and son of the founder of Ki Aikido, Koichi Tohei. In this book he talks about a variety of topics with Professor Katsuhiro Nishinari, many related to Ki or Ki-Aikido.
Ebook Checklist: 30+ tips for better Ebooks
In this post I give over 30 tips to help with the process of converting content to an Ebook which will be published on Amazon KDP, based on my experiences making several such Ebooks.