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 »
A few days ago I had dinner with my family in the ramen restaurant Kyuramen in Portland, and I wanted to give a brief review about it here. Keep in mind ramen is one of my favorite Japanese foods and I’ve tried many of the ramen places around Portland, so I am somewhat picky about… Read More »
I recently had an interesting exchange with a user on Facebook in the Japanese Literature group, which I wanted to mention here, along with a partial solution to the problem that was exposed. Until recently, it was apparently possible to download the source file of an ebook from Amazon KDP books (via “Devices and Content”)… Read More »
I’m proud to announce the release of a new book in my bilingual reader series, “Kantan! Read Japanese Stories Like a Native” by classic science fiction author Juza Unno.
English-based Japanese loanwords are a double-edged sword. While on one hand they can give English-speakers a free ticket to understanding words used in Japanese, on the other hand Japanese loanwords can sometimes be different than their original counterparts, whether it is a minor nuance or a huge gap. In this post I’d like to go… 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 »
Suzuko Nakano (中野 鈴子) (1906-1958) was a female Japanese poet born in Fukui prefecture who has, as far as I can tell, never been translated into English. This is my translation of her poem “闇と光と” (Darkness and Light). There is very little available about her in English online, but this is her Japanese Wikipedia page.… Read More »
In Japanese, many verbs have both a transitive (where an action occurs against an object) and intransitive form (where an action occurs on its own, without an object). Even though these forms can be expressed in English to a certain extent, there can be some subtle nuances. Lately I came across a sentence in Japanese… 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.