Japanese News Site Review: Unseen Japan
I’ve written a review about “Unseen Japan”, a site that targets unique and interesting stuff about Japan that you aren’t likely to have seen elsewhere.
Japanese vocabulary list: violin and music terms
As if I didn’t have enough hobbies, recently I started learning to play the violin. Knowing me, you might not be surprised to find that I’m doing it self-taught, at least for the time being. While I have had basic conversations about violin and music related topics, I realized that there are some terms I… Read More »
Oregon Ki Society: Learning mindfulness, self-control, and Aikido in and around Portland
In this article I give a detailed overview of Oregon Ki Society, an organization dedicated to spreading the teachings of Koichi Tohei that include Ki-Aikido and Ki principles. While Ki-Aikido is a martial art, the principles learned at OKS can be applied in many areas of your daily life, promoting things like mindfulness and self-control.
Japanese Light Novel Translation: “Past, Present, You” by Yuki Hoshizaki (Chapter 9)
This it the ninth 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, as well as Yeti san (from… Read More »
Japanese Novel review: “Nimrod” (ニムロッド) by Takahiro Ueda (上田 岳弘）
My reasons for purchasing Takahiro Ueda’s novel “Nimrod” are pretty typical: I liked the cover, liked the title, plus I liked the vague but significant-sounding marketing description on the obi (paper band used for marketing). Also, the book was relatively short, and (last but not least) the book was a winner of the Akutagawa prize,… Read More »
Interview with Novelist and Translator Eli K.P. William (author of “Cash Crash Jubilee” and “The Naked World”)
I was fortunate to talk with translator and author of “Cash Crash Jubilee”, Eli K.P. William on a bunch of interesting topics including translation, Japan, and studying Japanese. Find out why Eli doesn’t particularly like the term “augmented reality” –– and what he prefers instead.
Juza Unno SF story available in audio narration form on Historyradio.org radio program
The other day I wrote a post about how one of the science fiction stories I translated was published on a site that deals with various historically-relevant pieces of literature and other historical information. But it turns out that the main focus of that website is actually a radio station which streams historically relevant content… Read More »
A few hints to help understand Japanese classical literature
One of the perks of learning to read Japanese is that there is a huge body of diverse literature going back many hundreds of years. Furthermore, much of this is available to read for free on Aozora Bunko. Once you get comfortable enough reading modern Japanese literature from the last few decades, you may decide… Read More »
Japanese Light Novel Translation: “Past, Present, You” by Yuki Hoshizaki (Chapter 8)
This it the eighth 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, as well as Yeti san (from… Read More »
Japanese word highlight: “katte” (勝手)
In this article I’d like to go over the Japanese word “katte”, which is almost always written in kanji as 勝手. It’s a pretty common word and you’ll likely hear it once in a while in spoken Japanese, with perhaps a bit less usage in written Japanese (excluding dialogue lines which are essential spoken language).… Read More »