Learning useful day-to-day expressions is often one of the first priorities of a student of a foreign language, and being able to express being hungry (something which should happen to everyone daily) is pretty high on that list. The typical way we learn to express hunger is お腹が空く (onaka ga suku), which literally means “the… Read More »
In this post I want to go over a Japanese expression that builds on a few fundamental grammar aspects to make an interesting result. The expression can be described in generic form as 〜してもしきれない (~shite mo shikirenai), but you can switch the “suru” verbs with any other verb. First, let’s look an example: この染み、拭いても拭ききれない (kono… Read More »
I’m proud to announce the release my first anthology of Japanese literature containing a diverse set of stories from several authors, published in parallel English/Japanese for Japanese learners.
Sometimes when I see a thread flying by on Twitter and feel strongly towards the subject matter I will consider chiming in, but the problem is that trying to present a proper counter-argument on Twitter can be tricky. Sure, you can use a bunch of Tweets, but it gets hard to read, and also directly… Read More »
When learning a foreign language, knowing a diverse set of vocabulary words is an important requirement for becoming fluent. However, the number of words commonly used in everyday conversation is somewhat limited (at least compared to the number of words you would find in an average piece of literary fiction), and it’s also important to… Read More »
In this post I’d like to go over the meaning and derivation of the expression “どうにでもなれ” (dou ni demo nare). While this expression is made up of a bunch of basic words, the resultant meaning may surprise you. First, let’s look at the individual words with their basic meanings どう (dou) A question word that… Read More »
In this post I would like to go over the casual expression あるある (aru aru), which doesn’t have a literal parallel in English. I will also talk a little about where it is derived from. To give some context first to how you might see this phrase used, imagine an article titled “テレワークあるある” (terewaaku aru… Read More »
In this post I’d like to go over the common word 世話 (sewa) and some uses of it, including an important expression used in daily life. “Sewa”––usually written in kanji as “世話” and sometimes in hiragana as せわ––can be used for a variety of meanings. But I’d like to focus on the most common, and… Read More »
This is the second post of my Tackling Translation Troubles (TTT) series where I go over common challenges faced in Japanese to English translation, leveraging my own experience. In each episode I will try to use at least one example from Japanese literature to illustrate the topic at hand. (You can see the full list… Read More »
In this article I would like to describe how to express the idea of being “cool” in Japanese, along with a few related points. “Cool” has a bunch of meanings in English, so I want to clarify I am talking about the “stylish”, “fashionable” or “good” meaning, which isn’t related to temperature. The most common… Read More »