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 »
I’ve been exposed to Japanese taiko (太鼓) drumming from a young age, having seen several performances at the Morakami Japanese Museum & Gardens in South Florida. While I do enjoy watching taiko performances, to be honest I started getting a bit bored of them; not only because they seemed to change little from year-to-year, but… Read More »
Learning a foreign language is a challenge no matter which language you choose, and the difficulty achieving fluency depends on how distant it is from your native tongue(s), and whether you are in an environment where you are forced (or at least motivated) to use it daily. But once you become reasonably fluent in a… Read More »
(Update: I have since republished these stories in a larger compilation that you can find here.) In late October, I announced I was working on a new translation project–after around two years of listing translations on my blog, for the first time I was aiming to publish a translation in a more formal media than… Read More »
In Japanese, the word 初夢 (hatsuyume) means the first dream of the year. While there are several different definitions of this, the most common one seems to be it is the dream you have on the night of New Years day (Jan 1). By the way, this day is called お正月 (oshougatsu) or 元日 (ganjitsu)… Read More »
The other day, I made a post about how I turned my backyard into a Japanese karesansui rock garden and included some hints on how to make your own. I received a comment on that post from someone working for Real Japanese Gardens, a website that has some useful information about Japanese gardens (some posted… Read More »
Thanks to the nearly infinite resources available on the internet, studying a foreign language like Japanese on your own has become much easier than ten or twenty years ago. You can learn about many of the finer points of the language, including grammar, and even enjoy online media in that language using things like novels… Read More »
When we chose our latest place to live, we decided to give priority to inside the house and less concern for the backyard. Not only is our backyard small, but a large patio covers up a big portion of the grass, leaving an awkwardly-sized space that isn’t good for much of anything. I guess we… Read More »
(Update: my feelings about Ki-Aikido have changed somewhat since I wrote this article, especially how it differs from other styles of Aikido. I will keep this article for historical reasons, but hope to write more on this topic eventually). Over 3 years ago, I posted an article about the Japanese martial art Aikido (合気道) in which… Read More »