Recently I went on a family trip to Canada for a weekend, and while Japanese-related stuff wasn’t the primary focus, there was an element of that so I thought I would put a little travelogue here about it. From Portland it’s “only” a five or six hour drive. I guess the “only” part depends on… Read More »
I was in downtown Portland with my family and looking for some ramen, so we decided to try a relatively new ramen place called “ikimono Ramen”. Just judging from the name, already the place gave me a bad feeling (the name means “living thing” by the way, not sure what that means in this context),… Read More »
After seeing how a student of Japanese was using ChatGPT to write a daily journal, I decided to put down some of my thoughts on using ChatGPT and other AI tools for Japanese learning.
It’s easy to study a foreign language by cooping yourself up in your room and trying to memorize rules and words. But once you actually start using it, you realize that learning in isolation can only take you so far, and when actually speaking with natives you can really start learning the language. Traveling to… Read More »
Shin’ichiro Watanabe (渡辺 信一郎) is a director is most known for his classic anime Cowboy Bebop (カウボーイビバップ), which is definitely one of my top ten favorites. He also did Samurai Champloo (サムライチャンプルー), another of my favorites. Both of these are great not just because their stories and characters, but their wonderful music. Recently I heard… Read More »
In this post I decided to do an analysis of around twenty phrases from Frieren Episode 1, giving my opinions on the quality of the translation and other translation options.
This is my review of the first season of the Netflix-available Frieren, which happens to be one of my favorites of the last decade.
I’m proud to announce the release of a new book in my bilingual reader series, “Kantan! Read Japanese Stories Like a Native” by classic science fiction author Juza Unno.
English-based Japanese loanwords are a double-edged sword. While on one hand they can give English-speakers a free ticket to understanding words used in Japanese, on the other hand Japanese loanwords can sometimes be different than their original counterparts, whether it is a minor nuance or a huge gap. In this post I’d like to go… Read More »
As more and more anime series become available on Netflix, it seems like the average quality level continues to drop (though perhaps some of it is due to my tastes which become pickier and picker over time). Regardless, in the last year or so I would say there is one anime that I really enjoyed… Read More »