I’m pleased to announce the release of the 2nd volume of “Gensen: Selected Stories in Modern Japanese Literature”, with each story listed in both English and parallel Japanese/English versions, as will as mini-biographies on each author.
As you surely know, the world has been in a pretty crazy state the last few years, and as a result traveling overseas or even out-of-state has been challenging, if not worrisome. A few weeks ago, I had an opportunity to get out of Oregon for the first time in quite a long time and… Read More »
One significant difference between Japanese and a language like English is that words are more frequently omitted when they can be inferred from context. This applies to pretty much all types of speech: verbs, nouns, objects, and even particles (little grammatical helpers). In English, except for some special cases and slang usages, when referring to… Read More »
In this post I’d like to go over the meaning, origin, and usage of the word “yosage”, which can be written either in full hiragana (よさげ) or in a mix of kanji and hiragana (良さげ). This word can be a bit confusing since you might think the verb “sageru” (to lower) is related, though it… Read More »
In this post I talk about how I achieved an Aikido black belt in only a few years, including some details on how I trained, what is required to get a black belt, and some thoughts about how the test went.
Yesterday I did a brief survey-style quiz on Twitter with the following single question: Quick Japanese Quiz: What is a polite way to ask someone to begin eating a meal? Answer choices: (note: the romaji didn’t fit in the original post due to length limitations) 食ってくれ [kutte kure] いただきなさい [itadakinasai] 召し上がってください [meshiagatte kudasai] お腹にお入れいただけませんか？ [onaka… Read More »
Changing your PC’s language setting to Japanese is a great way to get daily exposure to a bunch of words, and to actually test your understanding of those words in a real way. There are drawbacks, like the possibility of running into unnatural translations (since after all much software is first written in another language… Read More »
I’ve written a large amount (probably several hundred) of articles about Japanese grammar on this blog, but for a change I thought I would write about a different topic, targeting a slightly different group of people: a list of reasons to learn Japanese. This sort of list is inherently subjective, and perhaps some of these… Read More »
In the Japanese language, while there are many variations, the basic word order looks like this: [subject] [object] [verb] 僕がりんごを食べた boku ga ringo wo tabeta I ate an apple. You can expand this out to include more types of speech like this: [topic] [subject] [direction or location of action] [object] [verb] [emotive particle(s)] 今日は僕が学校でりんごを食べたよ kyou… Read More »
Like many people, a majority of my study activities use a computer or mobile device, and the times when I use a physical textbook or other resource have drastically reduced over the last decade or two. Nevertheless, something can still be said for physical books that allow you to focus on studying without the countless… Read More »