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 »
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 »