Shin’ichiro Watanabe (渡辺 信一郎) is a director is most known for his classic anime Cowboy Bebop (カウボーイビバップ), which is definitely one of my top ten favorites. He also did Samurai Champloo (サムライチャンプルー), another of my favorites. Both of these are great not just because their stories and characters, but their wonderful music. Recently I heard… Read More »
In this post I decided to do an analysis of around twenty phrases from Frieren Episode 1, giving my opinions on the quality of the translation and other translation options.
Edogawa Rampo（江戸川乱歩） is an author who took influence from Western culture and went on to make a huge impact in classic Japanese literature, especially in the genres of mystery and thriller fiction. Back in 2021 I published The Masquerade Ball (覆面の舞踏者), a story by Rampo about a mysterious party that is, considering the spectrum of… Read More »
This is my review of the first season of the Netflix-available Frieren, which happens to be one of my favorites of the last decade.
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 »