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 »
In this post I’d like go over the Japanese verb 売れる (ureru) which can be a little tricky to understand. This verb is used fairly commonly in everyday life. First, let’s look at an example sentence: このテレビはよく売れるよ (kono terebi wa yoku ureru yo) When Japanese learners generally hear a sentence like the first time, they… 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 »
The word “demo” in Japanese (generally written in hiragana as でも) can have a variety of meanings depending on the context. In this article I will go through some of the most common ones and give example sentences for each. Usage 1: Contrasting a previous statement (“but”) One of the simplest and most common usage… Read More »
These days I generally don’t put aside that much time for reading manga, but I came across this interesting-looking manga called “Slime Life” by Megasawara so I decided on reading a few pages. I got hooked and ended up finishing it that same day. “Slime Life” is a story about a black sorceress named Daruru… 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.
As I confirmed myself a few years ago, Japanese has a large number of homonyms––words that have the same sound but different meanings. Personally I’m divided on the efficacy of teaching the various meanings of a single word together, since it can confuse language learners, but sometimes it can be good to know all the… Read More »
In this post I review Skritter, an app designed for learning how to write in Japanese (as well as Chinese). Although I highlight a bunch of nitpicks, overall Skritter is a useful app that is worth checking out.
In this article I’d like to go over the Japanese kanji 力 (which can be read “chikara”, “ryoku”, or “riki”), including some compounds that are made with it. This kanji has a bunch of meanings, but the majority of them can be categorized as “power”, “force”, or “energy”. But before we get too far I… Read More »
In this post I give over 50 introductory phrases, with translations. that can be used as starting blocks to build Japanese sentences.