During my Japanese studies, I’ve made it a point to try and have a thorough understanding of Japanese grammar because I feel that it gives me a good base not only for speaking and writing correctly, but also understanding nuances of the language I might otherwise miss. Just the other day the word “呼ばされる” (yobasareru)… Read More »
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 »
When learning a foreign language, it’s generally a good idea to learn some proverbs, what we call “kotowaza” (諺) in Japanese. It’s not just because they are a fun way to learn new words in context, but also because proverbs can express meaningful ideas in a concise form that often reflects that country’s history and… Read More »
My friend and collaborator Kaimai Mizuhiro (開米瑞浩) is working on an project that I think will be interesting to those studying Japanese, so I’ll talk about it a little here. Kaimai has a bunch of books out, and a common thread throughout them is how to communicate effectively (both verbally and with diagrams) in a… Read More »
In this post I give over 50 introductory phrases, with translations. that can be used as starting blocks to build Japanese sentences.
You probably know that the Japanese word “sono” means “that”, but in this article I will talk about an alternate way it can be used.
In many ways Japanese grammar is simpler than English grammar, especially in terms of fewer tenses to deal with and the omission of unnecessary words. However, sometimes thinking in terms of English can make it difficult to understand seemingly simple Japanese sentences. In this post I’d like to talk about the expression 「もっと早く知りたかった」 (“motto hayaku… Read More »
In this post I talk about literal vs. interpretative meanings in Japanese, and talk about how to properly interpret the word “urusai”. I also go over two examples using the phrase “~koto nai”.
In this post I go over the Japanese phrase “〜ことから” (~koto kara) and give a few examples of its usage.
I’ve released an ebook of “The Masquerade Ball” in bilingual Japanese/English format. It’s written by Edogawa Rampo, master of classic Japanese mystery.