Category Archives: culture

Japanese word origins: the strange tale of three “hashi” (Bridge, chopsticks, edge)

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 »

Advanced Japanese practice: listening to and understanding accents (and a character from Sakamoto Days)

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 »