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 »
One important aspect of the Japanese language, especially compared to English, is how nearly anything can be omitted––at least as long as the context is sufficient for the reader/listener to guess what is missing. But for those used to explicitly stating things (even if they are ‘obvious’ from the context), it can be tricky to… 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.
My “method” for learning Japanese (if you can even call it that) is based on the idea of immersing yourself in the language and trying to actively use whatever you have learned whenever an opportunity presents itself. I’m guessing the majority of my readers are not actually living in Japan––though my stats do point to… Read More »
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.
This is my translation of the 4th part of Kenji Miyazawa’s famous story “Matasaburo of the Wind”, which happens to be the same story referred to in the song “Matasaburo” by the rock band Yorushika.
Besides things like culture and media, one of the major reasons for wanting to learn a foreign language is a desire to live in a country that speaks that language, and to live somewhere the majority of us must also work there to be able to survive. So I’ve decided to make a vocabulary list… Read More »