Category Archives: General

Introducing Mr. Mizuhiro Kaimai (開米瑞浩), diagram wizard

The other day I had the luck of finding out about Mr. Mizuhiro Kaimai (開米瑞浩) when he left a comment on one of my blog posts and introduced me to a section of his blog where he talks about “Japanese Grammar in Logic Diagramming”. In this series of articles, Mr. Kaimai discusses several aspects of Japanese… Read More »

Japanese short story highlight: Yoko Ogawa’s “Hexagonal Room” (6角形の小部屋)

Since reading (and reviewing) Yoko Ogawa (小川洋子)’s novel “Little Bird” (小鳥), I’ve been interested in exploring more of what this unique author has to offer. Just today I came across an audio narration of one of her short stories called  “Hexagonal Room” (6角形の小部屋)here on Youtube, apparently from a radio talkshow. (Make sure you start listening… Read More »

Less than one day left for submissions to “Promising Translators 2018”!

A few weeks ago I announced “Promising Translators 2018”, Self Taught Japanese’s first ever translation contest, a Japanese to English fiction translation contest targeting amateur translators. The winner will receive a monetary prize, and there be other prizes given as well. This post is a reminder for those who are interested since there is less… Read More »

Two days left for submissions to “Promising Translators 2018”

A few weeks ago I announced “Promising Translators 2018”, Self Taught Japanese’s first ever translation contest, a Japanese to English fiction translation contest targeting amateur translators. The winner will receive a monetary prize, and there be other prizes given as well. This post is a reminder for those who are interested since there is only… Read More »

Bilingual Japanese books at Reajer.com available now for free

(Update: As Reajer has shut down, I have disabled the links in this article, but I will leave the rest of the article for the time being for historical reasons.) In October 2016, I reviewed the site Reajer.com which produces bilingual Japanese/English E-books with detailed explanations, across a wide range of levels from beginner to advanced.… Read More »

Promising Translators 2018 (Japanese Translation Contest): only one week left!

A few weeks ago I announced “Promising Translators 2018”, Self Taught Japanese’s first ever translation contest, a Japanese to English fiction translation contest targeting amateur translators. The winner will receive a monetary prize, and there be other prizes given as well. This post is a reminder for those who are interested since there is only… Read More »

Promising Translators 2018 (Japanese Translation Contest): only two weeks left

Two weeks ago I announced “Promising Translators 2018”, Self Taught Japanese’s first ever translation contest which is a JP-EN fiction contest targeting amateur translators. The winner will receive a monetary prize, and there be other prizes given as well. This post is a quick reminder for those who are interested since there are two weeks… Read More »

Japanese word comparison: yaru (やる) vs suru (する), two ways of ‘doing it’.

The Japanese verbs する (suru) and やる(yaru) are used quite frequently in the Japanese language, and while both of these mean “to do”, they have different usage. Let’s start with two general rules to help distinguish between these two verbs. First, する is more often used together with a noun to describe some action: 今晩、一緒に練習しましょう… Read More »