Besides things like culture and media, one of the major reasons for wanting to learn a foreign language is a desire to live in a country that speaks that language, and to live somewhere the majority of us must also work there to be able to survive. So I’ve decided to make a vocabulary list… Read More »
In this post I’d like to go over the Japanese expression “~nakute sumu” which is used fairly commonly in everyday speech. First, let’s look at an example sentence: 傘を持っていけば濡れなくてすむ。 (kasa wo motte ikeba nurenakute sumu.) すむ can sometimes mean “to live or inhabit” (住む), but from context here we know it has a different meaning,… Read More »
I reviewed the English version of Inio Asano’s “Nijigahara Holograph”, which ended up being one of my favorite manga of all time.
In this article I’d like to go over the expression “darou ni” (だろうに), which can be a little difficult to understand the first time you encounter it. As usual, before we look at this expression’s meaning let’s see what the individual parts mean. First we have “darou” (だろう), a word used to express the speaker’s… Read More »
I reviewed Yuu Nagira’s novel “My Beautiful Garden”, a story about the interconnected lives of a few people facing various problems.
The Japanese language is known for its heavy omission of all sorts of words when they can be inferred from context: objects, subjects, and even particles (tiny words that act as grammatical glue in a way similar to prepositions). Even simple everyday sentences like “食べた” (“I ate it”) can have multiple omissions (in that case,… Read More »
I’m proud to announce the release of a new translation of two of Kyusaku Yumeno’s works, published in both English-only and parallel Japanese/English formats.
When exploring the spacious Kinokuniya in download Portland the other day, I couldn’t decide what to buy so I ended up picking up on a whim the first episode of “Oyasumi Punpun” by Inio Asano. It has a pretty simple cover that is pure yellow, except for an embossed image on the front that I… Read More »
Musings and hints on the difficulties of learning conversation in a foreign language, inspired by a twitter post of someone who was struggling to learn conversation in Japanese without a teacher.
I’m pleased to announce the release of a book of short stories by classic author Kyusaku Yumeno, with stories listed in both English-only and Japanese/English parallel formats. Over 60 translation notes are included to give a deeper understanding of the original text.