In celebration of International Translation Day today, I’ve decided to make my E-book “Tales of the Disturbed”, a set of dark, introspective short stories by Toyoshima Yoshio (豊島 与志雄）free for the next day (meaning roughly for the next 24 hours). You can find the book here on Amazon. The book’s release article is here. Update:… Read More »
Yoshinobu Morikawa was a Japanese poet who lived from 1918 to 1942 and left behind various poems, some with dark or mysterious themes. He was said to be influenced by famous poet T. S. Eliot, author of The Wasteland. This post contains my full English translation of Morikawa’s poem “The Hollow City” (虚しい街), first published… Read More »
A few weeks ago I began learning the art of Japanese calligraphy, which is called “shodou” (書道). I posted a lengthy article here on some of the things I discovered, and included some hints for those interested in learning shodou. Right around the time I finished that article, a book arrived that I had purchased,「書道」の教科書… Read More »
Back in early 2017 I translated the short fiction story “Final Days of Summer” (残夏) written by Masaki Hashiba (ハシバ柾), which you can read in full here. Recently I received a query from a person named Perzipal regarding the retranslation and online publishing of this work into the Indonesian language. To make a long story short, after… Read More »
The Japanese も (mo) particle has a handful of uses, but one of the most common––and easiest to understand––is when it is used to indicate that something else also applies to a certain statement. For example: バナナも好きだよ (banana mo suki da yo) (I) also like bananas. Here we can see the word “also” cleanly captures the… Read More »
After spending a few weeks studying and practicing Japanese calligraphy (書道） I decided to write a detailed post about my experiences as an introduction to those who are interested in this artform.
When studying a foreign language, once you are able to learn enough grammar, characters, and vocabulary to be able to start reading books made for native-speakers, a new world of nearly unlimited knowledge opens to you. This is true not just for entertainment (novels, etc.), but also for study materials such as textbooks. This post… Read More »
It’s not uncommon for one word in a language to have multiple meanings, but for non-native learners it can be challenge to figure out all the meanings from context. Japanese is no exception, although intonation (depending on region) and kanji selection can help to differentiate meanings in some cases. In this post I want to… Read More »
The characters used in the Japanese language––comprised of hiragana, katakana, and kanji––use a large variety of shapes and strokes, and in my opinion are very visually pleasing. Calligraphy, a traditional art that is still popular in Japan today, takes these same characters and elevates them to a true art form that can often be seen… Read More »
In this chapter of “Past, Present, You”, Sora at last hints at the reason for the parallel universe that has brought her closer––and yet somehow more distant–––from Mizuki.