It’s easy to study a foreign language by cooping yourself up in your room and trying to memorize rules and words. But once you actually start using it, you realize that learning in isolation can only take you so far, and when actually speaking with natives you can really start learning the language. Traveling to… Read More »
I recently traveled to Japan to train in Aikido with Sensei Tohei Shin’ichi and visited a few places including Tokyo and Sapporo. I wrote about my experiences in a previous post, and you can see around 60 pictures from this trip below. (Note: WordPress adjusted a bunch of the pictures so that you can’t see… Read More »
In this article I talk in detail about my experiences in Japan to Tokyo, Hakodate, and Sapporo during a two-week trip that included training with Shin’ichi Tohei Sensei, the head of the world Ki Society.
This is my review of the first season of the Netflix-available Frieren, which happens to be one of my favorites of the last decade.
If you’ve studied Japanese for any amount of time, you’ve probably noticed that Japanese has many homophones, which are words that sound the same but have different meanings. Generally you can tell them apart from context (and there are also differences in intonation to help differentiate depending on the region, as well as kanji representation),… Read More »
As more and more anime series become available on Netflix, it seems like the average quality level continues to drop (though perhaps some of it is due to my tastes which become pickier and picker over time). Regardless, in the last year or so I would say there is one anime that I really enjoyed… Read More »
For beginner students I don’t recommend listening/reading a lot of Japanese where characters speak in a regional or other accent. While it’s good to have some understanding of other styles of accents beyond the typical Tokyo-dialect (東京弁), my concern is that you might unintentionally pick up something and use it without knowing it’s not typical… Read More »
This is a full bilingual translation of the Japanese fairy tale “The Accordion” by Ogawa Mimei, a story about a mountain hermit who comes across a main selling medicines.
A set of 40 pictures from my recent trip to Honolulu, Hawaii.
A weekend of Ki-Aikido training in Honolulu (and a visit to a temple) I recently came back from Honolulu, Hawaii, where I attended a three-day event involving intensive training in Ki-principles, Ki-Aikido, and Kiatsu. I went as a member of the Oregon Ki Society (more info here) and stayed in the dojo there with a… Read More »