Sometime back, I mentioned that I recommend reading children’s books in a foreign language as a good way to experience native-level content that isn’t too difficult. For Japanese, this is especially useful since you will have very little, if any, kanji to worry about, which is one stumbling block when reading Japanese books. I’ve read a great… Read More »
Recently I went on a long plane trip where I knew I wouldn’t have network for a few hours, and since I was planning on reading and/or translating during the flight, I needed a good Japanese dictionary mobile app that I knew would work offline. I ended up downloading a few, but the one I… Read More »
Recently at a Kinonuniya bookstore I picked up the 2nd edition (２号）of the book 小説幻冬 (Shousetsu Gentou) which is a compendium of Japanese short stories. I chose this because I was looking for something to read on a holiday trip, and didn’t want to get involved a long story, so though short stories would be perfect. When I… Read More »
Setting your computer, smartphone, and tablet to Japanese is a great way to expand your vocabulary in a natural way, using words in context instead of a dry vocabulary list. This means both the OS itself, as well as the applications or games you are using (sometimes the setting of these things is linked, sometimes… Read More »
Several months ago in a post I talked about how one of the main reasons I moved to Oregon was because of the prominent Japanese culture and people there (at least more so than South Florida). It’s been about half a year and I’m planning on writing on article about Portland and Japanese culture again to… Read More »
I’ll have to just come out and admit it: of all of the books I have read there is a small group I never made it to the end of, including both Japanese and English works. One of these is Kenji Miyazawa’s (宮沢賢治) “Night on the Galactic Railroad” (銀河鉄道の夜) which was a deeply moving story when… Read More »
Having become a member of the streaming service Crunchyroll a few months ago, I’ve sampled a few anime series, but for over half of them I ended up bored and never made it to the end. One exception was “Time of Eve” which I reviewed the other day. Besides anime, Crunchyroll also has a few live-action… Read More »
Recently I’ve been checking out a few new anime on the online streaming service Crunchyroll while I take part in my free trial there. I think I’ve written about this in a past post or two, but after watching anime for 5 or 10 years (or even longer) I started to get tired of the same… Read More »
“Memoirs of a traveller” (ある旅人の手記) is another short story I recently found on the free novel and short story site 「小説家になろう」. It reasonably short, at around 8,000 characters, and is grouped in the “human drama” (ヒューマンドラマ) category. If you are like me, and haven’t heard of this word before, it basically means works that focus on… Read More »
This manga was recommended by someone, so I decided to read through the first volume. At first, the plot seemed strongly reminiscent of a certain early 90s movie about a unique type of “time travel”, however as you read into the 2nd and 3rd parts you start to see there is much more depth to… Read More »