Recently I discovered there was an extended Ki-Aikido training session being held in Osaka in the massive Asue Arena right around the time I had planned to be nearby on a family trip. While a bit nervous, I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to practice Japanese in Japan while learning more about how… Read More »
I’m happy to announce a new podcast about all things Japanese, “Japanesque”.
In March of 2024 I went on a trip to Japan with my family for around a week. We went to Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Jinbocho, and Akihabara (yeah, it was a busy trip!). I’ve detailed a previous trip to Japan on this blog fairly extensively here, and for this recent trip I am not planning… Read More »
I’m proud to announce the release of one my longest translations yet, a surreal fiction piece about a magical goldfish.
When studying a foreign language, it’s nice to learn a little bit about a lot of words. But at the same time, it’s also nice to get deep and learn the various nuances of certain words, especially those that are used frequently. In this post I want to do a deep dive on the word… Read More »
I decided to write up the main reasons I continue to train in the martial art of Ki Aikido extensively for several years, and plan to continue to do so.
Lately I have been doing less articles about grammar and expressions and more on media reviews and other topics, but since I recently got a request from a colleague I thought I would give a treatment of the expression 何となく “nan to naku” (which can also be written in full hiragana as なんとなく). First, let’s… Read More »
In recent years I have been more active on Twitter/X and a little less active on this blog, though I am still trying to keep up the pace of at least one article a week. Besides the persistency of blog articles vs. the transience of Twitter posts, there is the fact that it’s much easier… Read More »
I’ve decided to review the recently released series Pluto, based on the manga by Naoki Urasawa, now one of my favorite anime series.
Japanese intonation, in a nutshell, consists of a series of high and low pitches, where each word has a characteristic pattern of these high and low pitches. There are words where the pitch rises, words where the pitch falls, as well as where the pitch both rises and falls. When a word is said in… Read More »