When learning a foreign language, knowing a diverse set of vocabulary words is an important requirement for becoming fluent. However, the number of words commonly used in everyday conversation is somewhat limited (at least compared to the number of words you would find in an average piece of literary fiction), and it’s also important to… Read More »
These days I’ve been spending a good portion of my time trying to find interesting and noteworthy Japanese fiction to translate and publish, a process I blogged about a few years ago here. But in this article I want to focus on a specific activity I discovered that really has helped me gain a better… Read More »
I’m happy to announce “Gensen”, a new place to read Japanese literature in a serialized form, much like a digital literary magazine. To start with I have published “Cactus Rose” and “Acala the Immovable”, fiction pieces that I highly recommend.
In this post I’d like to go over the meaning and derivation of the expression “どうにでもなれ” (dou ni demo nare). While this expression is made up of a bunch of basic words, the resultant meaning may surprise you. First, let’s look at the individual words with their basic meanings どう (dou) A question word that… Read More »
In this post I would like to go over the casual expression あるある (aru aru), which doesn’t have a literal parallel in English. I will also talk a little about where it is derived from. To give some context first to how you might see this phrase used, imagine an article titled “テレワークあるある” (terewaaku aru… Read More »
I reported a few years ago about a program where those with Japanese citizenship can get free textbooks each year from the Japanese consulate. We have been getting these for our son, and I have looked through many of them myself. Frankly, each of these textbooks has been extremely helpful in teaching me various things… Read More »
In this post I’d like to go over the common word 世話 (sewa) and some uses of it, including an important expression used in daily life. “Sewa”––usually written in kanji as “世話” and sometimes in hiragana as せわ––can be used for a variety of meanings. But I’d like to focus on the most common, and… Read More »
This is the second post of my Tackling Translation Troubles (TTT) series where I go over common challenges faced in Japanese to English translation, leveraging my own experience. In each episode I will try to use at least one example from Japanese literature to illustrate the topic at hand. (You can see the full list… Read More »
While I am by no means a heavy Netflix watcher, I like to browse the movies and series once in a while and try out anything that looks interesting. More often than not, I end up getting bored partway through and don’t finish the series or the movie. But just the other day I ended… Read More »
Languages are filled with combinations of certain words that are used to express something that is more than the sum of their parts. You can call these “expressions”, though I like to call them the slightly more fitting term “grammar pattern”. These can be especially tricky to learn because sometimes you can’t simply look them… Read More »