These days calligraphy has been taking a big chunk of my hobby time, and I feel like I have been gradually improving. However, the other day something strange happened to one of my brushes, and after much research and experimentation I finally managed to solve the issue, so I wanted to talk about this for… Read More »
On a recent trip to Hawaii I stopped by a BOOKOFF store that had an excellent selection of used books, and I wanted to write a review about one of the books I ended up purchasing there. It’s called 筆ペン練習帳 (fudepen renshuuchou) and is written by 鈴木 曉昇 (Gyoushou Suzuki). You can roughly translate the… Read More »
I’m proud to announce the second book in my new series of Japanese bilingual readers, showcasing “The Bowels of the City”, a historically relevant experimental work by modernist author Riichi Yokomitsu (横光利一).
Being busy with various things, I haven’t had a chance to read much paper-media Japanese literature in the last few months. But when I saw “The Glimmer of Ink” (墨のゆらめき）by Shion Miura (三浦しをん）in the Beaverton Kinokuniya bookstore, I decided to take another dive back into the delightful world of Japanese literature. Shion Miura is known… Read More »
In this post I want to highlight a common and important word in the Japanese language, “yoku”. It can be written in hiragana as よく, and depending on the meaning can also be written in kanji as 良く or 欲. The first meaning I would like to go over is the most common one, which… Read More »
For anyone who is even the least bit picky about what they watch, it’s easy to get annoyed by the lack of quality shows and movies available on Netflix, whether it is anime or live action productions. I try to limit the amount of time I spend watching Netflix, but with a few exceptions most… Read More »
In this post I give some highlights about the recent production of an audiobook based on Japanese literature, and I also announce a giveaway involving a few free copies of said audiobook.
Weather is part of our day-to-day lives, whether it is a rainstorm, a heatwave, or extra strong winds. And the seasons are one of the fundamental ways we categorize weather in terms of certain weather patterns. In Japan the seasons are especially important, partially because the types of foods that are available fresh differ significantly… Read More »
Often language learners will wonder how long it takes them to master, or at least become fluent in a foreign language, especially when deciding whether to start studying a language or not. And from the point of view of time management, to a certain extent that is a logical thing to want to know. A… Read More »
This is my translation of the 6th and final part of Kenji Miyazawa’s famous story “Matasaburo of the Wind”, which happens to be the same story referred to in the song “Matasaburo” by the rock band Yorushika.