Category Archives: Reviews
Aikido book review: 気の呼吸 (“Ki Breathing”) by 藤平信一 (Shin’ichi Tohei)
Kouichi Tohei (藤平光一) was a skilled martial artist who leveraged difficulties in his life to reach an amazing level of ability, and went on to established his own style of Aikido called Ki-Aikido, more formally known as Shin Shin Touitsu Aikido (心身統一合氣道). But he did more than simply practice physical martial arts techniques; Tohei Sensei… Read More »
Blog review: Landofnudotcom (landofnu.com)
It’s rare that I read blogs written in English about Japanese, but there is one blog I do check out pretty often so I thought I would highlight in a focused post: landofnu.com. This blog, which seems to have started in February 2011, has a variety of topics: Japanese (kotowaza and 4-letter compounds), fiction, non-fiction,… Read More »
Japanese learning app review: Skritter
Excerpt of a Hayashi Fumiko story published on Books on Asia
Book Review: “Weaving Words: The Alchemy of Languages” by María Ortega García
The other day I saw a reference to María Ortega García’s book “Weaving Words: The Alchemy of Languages” (amazon link) on Twitter somewhere, and both the title and book summary sounded really interesting, so I contacted the author. She was kind enough to send me a review copy of the paper version of this book,… Read More »
Japanese literature review: “大きな鳥にさらわれないよう” (“To Avoid Being Swept Away by a Large Bird”) by 川上弘美 (Hiromi Kawakami)
I picked up “To Avoid Being Swept Away by a Large Bird” by Hiromi Kawakami for the usual reasons––an interesting description on the cover, a curious title, and a reasonable length––but reading the first few paragraphs helped me close the deal (although I admit it was more because the prose was easy to read than… Read More »
Japanese Netflix Drama review: “Alice in Borderland” (1st Season)
Japanese anime review: “Blame!” (ブラム)
The other day I was going through Netflix and having a tough time finding a series or movie that I could really get into. After some searching I discovered the anime movie “Blame!” (supposedly pronounced “Blam!”, though the Japanese title is ブラム), and after a few minutes I was hooked, finishing off a roughly two… Read More »