Watching Japan’s countryside rush by outside the window of a fast-moving train always mesmerizes me. There is a natural, peaceful beauty to the expansive fields of green, interspersed with homes bearing bright-colored roofs in shades of orange and blue. The land is fairly flat, so in some places you can see far into the distance, as things… Read More »
One thing that can be a bit challenging about learning Japanese is its system for counting items. In this post I’ll go over that and give some related resources. The basic formula for using counters is pretty simple. If you have something you want to count you use a combination of the numeral (いち、に、さん, etc.)… Read More »
Any of you living in Japan or keeping tabs on life there surely have heard about the raise to their consumption tax, but for those of you who are more focused on Japanese entertainment (manga, anime,etc.) I thought I’d write about it briefly. Beginning April 1st Japan has raised their consumption tax from 5% to… Read More »
Music shouldn’t be overlooked as an important learning resource for those studying Japanese or any other foreign language. Though song lyrics can be difficult to understand (I’m notoriously horrible at comprehending them, even in English), on the flip side you can get exposure to different vocabulary you normally wouldn’t be in touch with. Also, by… Read More »
I believe that having a child is one of the most rewarding things you can do in life, and for parents where two or more languages are spoken fluently there is always the option of raising the child on more than one language. There are many different approaches to this, but what’s clear is that… Read More »