Fairy tale about a magic organ: Mimei Ogawa’s “The Life of a Musical Instrument”
I’ve translated and published the full text of the Japanese fairy tale “The Life of a Musical Instrument” (楽器の生命) by Mimei Ogawa (小川未明)
Juza Unno SF story published on history website
I’m very happy to report that my English translation of the story “Mysterious Spacial Rift” from classic SF writer Juza Unno (海野十三) was recently published on Historyradio.org, a cool site that has a radio station and blog covering a variety of historically relevant writers. You can read the full text of “Mysterious Spacial Rift” here.… Read More »
Strategies for guiding a child to speak in a foreign language
As if raising a child isn’t difficult enough, raising a child to speak a language different than the primary language(s) of the country you live in further complicates things. There are various reasons for why parents want their child or children to speak another language, but I’ve heard many stories where the child ends up… Read More »
Beware of dubious anime subtitles on Netflix
Ironically, the Japanese form of entertainment that I had consumed the most in my early years of studying Japanese––anime––is now among those I consume the least. But still I like to watch an episode every once in a while, sometimes even an entire series. Recently I had an opportunity to get a Netflix subscription on… Read More »
Japanese Light Novel Translation: “Past, Present, You” by Yuki Hoshizaki (Chapter 6)
This it the sixth 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 »
Dystopian SF Novel review: “Cash Crash Jubilee” by Eli K.P.William
I reviewed “Cash Crash Jubilee”, a dystopian SF novel I found terribly entertaining that’s set in an all-too-realistic Japan.
Literary Japanese: shifting around the order of topics
In English, language used in literature can be quite different to that used in everyday conversation, with variations in vocabulary, sentence length, and word order, among other things. For example, a simple phrase like “A captain was I!” has a tone that marks it as literary, and generally wouldn’t be used in spoken language unless… Read More »
まえ (mae) vs まで (made): what’s the difference?
Words that sound similar can cause trouble for those learning a foreign language, especially if the words have similar meanings. In this post I want to go over the difference between the Japanese words ”mae” (written either as まえ or 前) and “made” (usually written as まで, but in rare cases as 迄), which are… Read More »
Japanese Light Novel Translation: “Past, Present, You” by Yuki Hoshizaki (Chapter 5)
This it the fifth 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 Light Novel Translation: “Past, Present, You” by Yuki Hoshizaki (Chapter 4)
This it the fourth 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 »