Over 3 years ago, I posted an article about the Japanese martial art Aikido (合気道) in which I noted that I was taking a break from training. I also mentioned that I was waiting until my son was old enough to be able to train. Last year, my family and I moved to Portland, Oregon, and… Read More »
Over time I’ve had many people, both offline and online, take a look at things I’ve written and give valuable feedback to help me become a better writer and translator. After some consideration I’ve decided to do a slightly more formal search for one or more people to act as editors/proofreaders for things that I… Read More »
This is my translation of the second chapter of the second story “Starfollower” (星を辿る人) of the fantasy work “Final Days of Summer” (残夏) by Masaki Hashiba (ハシバ柾). I’ve gotten permission from the author to translate it and put it on my blog. The original work was published online not in chapters, but as one long entry with some breaks.… Read More »
When studying Japanese, especially if you don’t live in Japan, there are always blind spots which can develop in your learning depending on what materials and methods you use to study. One area that I’ve found difficult is slang, because many of the materials I use (especially books and TV dramas) tend to not use… Read More »
This is the 6th chapter of the fantasy novel “The Rainlands” (雨の国) by Haruka Asahi (朝陽遥) which I am translating from Japanese with the author’s permission. It is about a man’s journey to a mysterious land and his encounter with its indigenous people and culture. If you enjoy this story and want to read more, please consider liking this… Read More »
This is the 2nd chapter of the fantasy novel “The Rainlands” (雨の国) by Haruka Asahi (朝陽遥) which I am translating from Japanese with the author’s permission. It is about a man’s journey to a mysterious land and his encounter with its indigenous people. If you enjoy this story and want to read more, please consider liking this post… Read More »
On the blog Shosetsu Ninja, Yeti reviews Japanese books, and he has recently also started putting up a few translations of samples of books and other things. Last year, after discovering the book “そして、星の輝く夜がくる” on my blog (which I did a short translation of here), he read it and posted his own review here. (Update: This… Read More »
These days rather than reading Japanese novels, each which can still take me quite a long time to finish, I’ve been reading a literary magazine called 小説幻冬 (“Shousetsu Gento”, where “shousetsu” means ‘novel’ or ‘short story’) published by 幻冬社 (Gentosha). [Gotta love the name “幻冬”, which is made up for the characters for “mysterious” and… Read More »
This is the English translation of the third part (of four) of the first story (“Stargazer”) of the series of short stories titled “Final Days of Summer” (残夏) by Masaki Hashiba (ハシバ柾). I’ve gotten permission from the author to translate and put these on my blog, and he is very excited about his work being translated to English. As always,… Read More »
It’s pretty commonly known that Japanese takes many loanwords from other languages, especially English. (I’ve written in detail about this before here) These range from obvious ones like オレンジ (the color ‘orange’), some that are bit tricky like セーター (sweater), and there are even combination words like the famous カラオケ (‘karaoke’ which is a combo… Read More »