The Japanese word 親孝行 (oyakoukou) doesn’t really have an exact parallel in English, though in a dictionary you’ll find something like “being dutiful towards one’s parents” which is a good attempt to translate it. One person’s definition of this is along the lines of “respecting your parents, valuing them highly, and doing things for them”… Read More »
One thing that makes mastering a foreign language tricky is how the vocabulary, grammar, and even pronunciation can change depending on the environment and situation. For example, watching an cartoon targeting children and a comedy show broadcast on TV will be extremely different experiences. For Japanese, assuming you have a good foundation in grammar, if you watch… Read More »
Despite my obsession with studying Japanese language for a major chunk of my life, I’ll admit to a weakness of knowledge when it comes to Japanese culture. Though I feel I know many of the basics, especially concerning modern Japan, I know very little of Japan’s history and there are many areas of their culture which I… Read More »
In Japanese, there are several ways of saying “why” and “how”. In this post I’m going to go over a few of the more common ones and discuss a few exceptions. Starting with “why”, we have the following expressions, each with it’s own nuance. なんで (nande) – basic “why”, slightly informal nuance (Kanji: 何で) どうして (doushite) –… Read More »
Being a fan of Japanese anime, I rarely watch American cartoons. This is both because I am usually turned off by their, well, cartoony and unrealistic art style, plus the fact that on average the stories are just less interesting to me. I’ll admit to a major bias here, which probably came about because I watched hundreds… Read More »
Cool Japan Guide, by Abby Denson, is marketed with the catchy subtitle: “Fun in the land of manga, lucky cats, and ramen”. Despite the fact I am pretty heavily into Japanese culture, I haven’t read a printed book on it in some time, so I was looking forward to reading this book. This 128 page… Read More »
Kendama is a traditional Japanese toy consisting of a ball (玉, tama) and cross-shaped base (usually made out of wood) which are connected via a thin, long string (糸, ito). In addition to the handle, which can be held comfortably with one hand, the base contains three small indented areas of various sizes (called “皿”,… Read More »
In the continuing quest to improve my Japanese reading skills and experience various facets of Japanese culture, I’ve been reading different types of books over the last few years. The genres range from children’s picture books to classics like Ningen Shikkaku. My latest challenge was the book “オレたちバブル入行組” (Oretachi baburu nyuukougumi) by Jun Ikeido (池井戸潤), which began serialization… Read More »
My family and I had a great time on our 15-day vacation to Japan this August, and I really enjoyed writing so many posts about it. Although it’s possible to get a page linking to a bunch of blog posts using keywords (like this), for ease of use I think an old-fashioned table of contents… Read More »
For the last two days of our 2015 Japan trip, we decided on staying in a hotel in Narita. Though Narita isn’t exactly known for it’s sightseeing, being only 10-15 minutes away from the Narita airport is extremely convenient. The hotel we stayed in, Narita View Hotel (成田ビューホテル), also had shuttle service to the Airport… Read More »