Besides things like culture and media, one of the major reasons for wanting to learn a foreign language is a desire to live in a country that speaks that language, and to live somewhere the majority of us must also work there to be able to survive. So I’ve decided to make a vocabulary list… Read More »
In this post I’d like to go over the Japanese expression “~nakute sumu” which is used fairly commonly in everyday speech. First, let’s look at an example sentence: 傘を持っていけば濡れなくてすむ。 (kasa wo motte ikeba nurenakute sumu.) すむ can sometimes mean “to live or inhabit” (住む), but from context here we know it has a different meaning,… Read More »
I reviewed the English version of Inio Asano’s “Nijigahara Holograph”, which ended up being one of my favorite manga of all time.
My predilections for art style combined with my love of Japanese culture means that most of the time if I have a choice between a Japanese manga or a Western (English) comic book, I will usually pick the former. But when I came across Animus by French cartoonist Antoine Revoy, I couldn’t help giving it… Read More »
I’ve translated Masao Yamakawa’s “The Gift of Loneliness” and released in full as a free ebook that you can download. It’s a short piece of classic Japanese literature about a couple struggling to recover from a devastating loss in their lives, which is made that much more poignant during the holiday season.
These days I generally don’t put aside that much time for reading manga, but I came across this interesting-looking manga called “Slime Life” by Megasawara so I decided on reading a few pages. I got hooked and ended up finishing it that same day. “Slime Life” is a story about a black sorceress named Daruru… Read More »
I’m happy to announce Arigatai Book’s first ever end-of-year sale, with discounts on two ebooks and one paperback.
In this article I’d like to go over the expression “darou ni” (だろうに), which can be a little difficult to understand the first time you encounter it. As usual, before we look at this expression’s meaning let’s see what the individual parts mean. First we have “darou” (だろう), a word used to express the speaker’s… Read More »
Compound words are very common in the Japanese language, and these can be especially nice for learners since it allows guessing the meaning and pronunciation of a word you have seen for the first time (assuming you are familiar with the component words). For example, let’s take this word: 売り物 (urimono) If we know that… Read More »
If you’re read this blog much in the last few years you probably know that I have been gradually publishing a series of ebooks containing translations of works by Mimei Ogawa (小川未明), an important figure in Japanese children’s literature. I also recently released an audiobook of Volume 1 earlier this year. This series of books… Read More »