Languages are filled with combinations of certain words that are used to express something that is more than the sum of their parts. You can call these “expressions”, though I like to call them the slightly more fitting term “grammar pattern”. These can be especially tricky to learn because sometimes you can’t simply look them… Read More »
Arigatai Books is proud to announce the release of a new ebook with short stories from a fresh (albeit classic) voice, Masao Yamakawa, an Akutagawa/Naoki-nominated writer with a unique literary style. The stories are published in both bilingual English/Japanese and English-only versions.
My review of head of Ki-Aikido Shin’ichi Tohei’s latest book about improving your posture and breathing in order to maximize your potential as a person, including applications to many daily-life areas such as driving, sitting, and even washing dished. This book is strongly related to a NHK special that ran last year on similar topics.
To celebrate the release of Volume 6 of my series of Japanese classic fairy tales this week, I’ve decided to run a little giveaway where I give out 6 free copies of the audiobook of Volume 1 of this series. As I will be using promo codes provided by Audible, you will have to have… Read More »
I’m happy to announce the 6th book of my series on Japanese classic fairy tales, written by Mimei Ogawa. The highlight this time is “The Reincarnation of a Sake Glass”, a tale about a special sake glass across several generations.
In this post, I wanted to discuss an interesting connection between the volitional form in Japanese and the words “deshou” / “darou”. To begin with I will go over the meaning of each, and then see how they relate. The volitional form represents the speaker’s volition, or will, and for the verb “suru” looks like… Read More »
I’ve translated Masao Yamakawa’s “Fireworks of the Day” and released in full as a free ebook that you can download for a limited time. It’s a short piece of classic Japanese literature about a teenage boy who takes a woman to a baseball game, only to have her give a shocking declaration.
The word “demo” in Japanese (generally written in hiragana as でも) can have a variety of meanings depending on the context. In this article I will go through some of the most common ones and give example sentences for each. Usage 1: Contrasting a previous statement (“but”) One of the simplest and most common usage… Read More »
I reviewed the semi-biographical essay collection “What’s so great about being 90 years old?” by award-winning nonagenarian author Aiko Sato.
I’ve done a full voice narration of the work “The Foundary” by Kyusaku Yumeno, a story about a disturbing factory and the man who has inherited it.