After having just released an E-book, I decided to allow myself the pleasure of reading an English novel (generally, I am either doing translations or reading Japanese works). I choose “Summerland”, a book released in 2018 by Hannu Rajaniemi, who happens to be the author of “The Quantum Thief”, a SF novel that was released… Read More »
While I know many of us struggle with tsundoku (積ん読)––buying mounds of books you never read––perhaps tondoku (止ん読)––starting a book or series and never finishing it––is an even graver crime. (Note: please see the last paragraph of this post regarding the word ‘tondoku‘) Sometime back I had read the first few issues of manga Inuyashiki (いぬやしき) by… Read More »
In recent years I have been spending a good portion of my hobby time on Japanese-related stuff (studying, reading, translating), but before I got into Japanese I spent a lot of time playing a few musical instruments, particularly piano. While this post will be a little off-topic compared to my usual focus, I thought my… Read More »
I’m a pretty big fan of Japanese gardens, to the point I remade my backyard into one, so I was happy to read “Minature Japanese Gardens: Beautiful Bonsai Landscape Gardens For Your Home” by Kenji Kobayashi (小林 健二). It is published by Tuttle Publishing. This book is a great way to learn about bonsai plants… Read More »
While I had watched a large number of Japanese dramas in the first few years of studying Japanese (and I feel it helped me immensely in many ways), at some point I started getting tired of the same hackneyed stories and cheesy acting. I’m also pretty picky about plot, and when I am able to… Read More »
Konbucha tea seems to be increasingly popular these days. For example, at one Whole Foods Market grocery store in Portland there is a konbucha bar with a lineup of teas on tap, and there are many types of konbucha drinks for sale in the refrigerated drink section. Coincidentally, when recently reading a magazine I came across an article which… Read More »
In the process of researching how to obtain official legal permission to translate and publish certain Japanese authors, I discovered the book “文藝年鑑” (bungei nenkan), which can be translated as “Literature Yearbook”. In this post I’d like to review this important reference guide, especially useful to translators and those deeply interested in Japanese literature. (By… Read More »
This article is part of the series about my July 2018 trip to Japan. Please see the table of contents page for other articles in this series as they are posted. In a previous article about robots I mentioned the Miraikan museum, also known as “The National Museum of Emerging Science & Innovation.” In this… Read More »
This article is part of the series about my July 2018 trip to Japan. Please see the table of contents page for other articles in this series as they are posted. I’ve been interested in robots since my college years (I took a class where we built and programmed robots), and I’m very lucky that… Read More »
This article is part of the series on my July 2018 trip to Japan. Please see the table of contents page for other articles in this series as they are posted. None of us had been to northeast Japan before, so we decided to spend a good portion of this trip in the cities of… Read More »