This article is part of the series on my July 2018 trip to Japan. Please see the table of contents page for other articles in this series as they are posted. As I mentioned previously, we decided on staying at the Narita View Hotel for a single day at the beginning and the end of the… Read More »
This article is part of the series describing my July 2018 trip to Japan. Please see the table of contents page for other articles in the series as they are posted. We started searching for plane tickets far in advance and ended up purchasing them from Delta nearly 6 months ahead of time. Since it… Read More »
I recently returned from a trip to Japan that I mentioned a previous post. As I’ve done for some other trips, I’ve decided to write a series of articles about my experiences on this trip, in the hope that it will be of interest to others. In this first article, I’ll give a brief overview… Read More »
In the near future I’ll be traveling to Japan on vacation, and since it has been 3 years since my last trip (in 2015 which I documented here in great detail), I’m really looking forward to it. While I am hoping this trip will generate some great content for this blog, those article(s) will take… Read More »
Emphasis on manners and politeness is one of the key characteristics of both Japanese culture as well as an integral part of the language itself Beginners generally start with basic phrases like “ありがとう” (arigatou), “ごめん” (gomen), and “どういたしまして” (dou itashimashite), but eventually learn better ways to express themselves in a variety of situations. In this… Read More »
The other day I had the luck of finding out about Mr. Mizuhiro Kaimai (開米瑞浩) when he left a comment on one of my blog posts and introduced me to a section of his blog where he talks about “Japanese Grammar in Logic Diagramming”. In this series of articles, Mr. Kaimai discusses several aspects of Japanese… Read More »
I’ll be the first to admit that the novel “Boy of Civilization” was a hyoushigai (表紙買い) for me, which basically means I bought it after being attracted by the cover. Not only was it beautiful on its own, but it also reminded me of the cover of “Lagos on a Journey” (旅のラゴス) by Yasutaka Tsutsui.… Read More »
When I first discovered Juza Unno’s “Eighteen O’Clock Music Bath” (now published as part of the compilation “Fast Forward Japan”), I was really excited to find a Japanese dystopian novel. At the time, I felt like there was very few Japanese dystopian works, however after doing a little research I discovered there is quite a… Read More »
With a country like Japan that has tens of thousands of years of history, I guess it’s not much of a surprise that there is always more to learn. This includes cultural stuff, but also words and expressions that you may not have had exposure to on a daily basis (especially if are studying Japanese… Read More »
The novel Lolita, written in 1955 by Russian American novelist Vladimir Nabokov, is a classic piece of literature that I think many people are at least vaguely familiar with (heck, even Sting has apparently read it back in the 80s). While I admit I haven’t read it, recently at the library I stumbled upon another… Read More »