The more I study Japanese the more I am attracted by Japan’s literature that boasts a certain mystique hard to find in western fiction. In addition to the many differences between the English and Japanese languages themselves, Japan has a culture that goes back several thousands of years, giving an extra depth to its literary… Read More »
In this post I’d like to highlight the Japanese word “hikizuru”, which is usually written with a combination of kanji and hiragana as 引きずる, or in only hiragana as ひきずる. I chose this word because I hear it once in awhile used for a metaphoric meaning that may not be obvious immediately. (Note: ひきづる is… Read More »
When studying a foreign language, it’s natural for all sorts of questions to come up––how to pronounce words, how to use grammar correctly, and (perhaps the hardest) how to speak or write natural sounding language. For those taking a formal language class, generally there will be some time either after or during class to ask… Read More »
This it the tenth chapter of a novel I am translating and publishing on this blog. See this post for the first chapter and more details about the novel. I want to thank the author, Yuki Hoshizaki (星崎ゆうき) for giving me permission to translate and publish this chapter here. You can find the original Japanese… Read More »
After struggling to find a good job after graduating college, Ryota hits upon the idea to become a high-rise window cleaner, a dangerous job with poor pay. One of the job’s perks is being able to spy into other people’s lives and see moments that would otherwise be unknown to the rest of the world,… Read More »
Watching videos in Japanese on YouTube is one great way to practice your listening skills, as well as a pick up a lot of new words and expressions, although it’s best that you have strong fundamentals of Japanese grammar and core vocabulary before getting too deep into this. Sometimes I like to search in Japanese… Read More »
The other day I stopped by the Kinokuniya bookstore in Beaverton, Oregon, and stood before the bookshelf of hardcover Japanese fiction as I tried to figure out what to read next. I ended up choosing “The Woman in the Purple Skirt” (むらさきのスカートの女) by “Natsuko Imamura” for two reasons: it had won the prestigious Akutagawa prize… Read More »
Anyone who studies Japanese for even a short time knows there is a huge number of loanwords, and there seems to be more being coined every day. While they come from a bunch of world languages, yappari many are from English. This is both a blessing and a curse. If the word sounds like its… Read More »
In the post I’d like to go over a common way of expressing an introductory idea in Japanese. We will begin with a basic form of this, んだけど (n da kedo) and then go over some variations. First, let’s look at a simple example: 僕、ずっと日本語を勉強してるんだけど、まだペラペラじゃない (boku, zutto nihongo wo benkyou shiteru n da kedo, mada… Read More »
Despite the many prose translations I’ve done, I’ve never attempted to translate an entire poem from Japanese to English before. That’s partially because I generally don’t read poetry that often (in either Japanese or English), and hence am even less comfortable trying to translate it. Another reason is that generally I’m pretty picky about what… Read More »