Category Archives: General

Japanese literature release: “A Brute’s Love” by Edogawa Rampo (bilingual reader)

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 »

Japanese word origins: the strange tale of three “hashi” (Bridge, chopsticks, edge)

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 Japanese study method for ebooks, Amazon’s blocking of file exporting, and a way around it (for our books)

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 »

Advanced Japanese practice: listening to and understanding accents (and a character from Sakamoto Days)

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 »