Tag Archives: free

Japanese Site Review: カクヨム (kakuyomu) – a great place for free novels and short stories

Sometime last year I wrote a review of the site “syosetu.com” (小説家になろう) which is a nice place to get your fill of free (and legal) Japanese novels and short stories. Since then, I have been a pretty heavy user of the site, reading portions of a great many stories, and writing emails to handful of authors to get… Read More »

Japanese short novel translation: ”Sluggish Symbol, Inane Illusion” (緩慢な表象と虚ろな幻想): Chapter 5: “A Digression”

”Sluggish Symbol, Inane Illusion” is a story written by Yuki Fujimura that is published on syosetsu.com. I enjoyed it so much I decided to translate it into English. This story takes place in a world where each citizen is legally obligated to write a single book during their lifetime. You can see more information about this novel including a brief… Read More »

Japanese short story translation “Memoirs of a Traveller” (ある旅人の手記): Prologue

A little while ago I reviewed the short story “Memoirs of a Traveller” (ある旅人の手記) which I discovered on the site syosetsu.com (review). After reading through many stories on that site, this is one of the few that I really enjoyed, and also I felt it would be a good candidate for an English translation. I wrote… Read More »

Japanese short story review: “Memoirs of a traveller” (ある旅人の手記) by Romo Mamiya (まみや ろも)

“Memoirs of a traveller” (ある旅人の手記) is another short story I recently found on the free novel and short story site 「小説家になろう」. It reasonably short, at around 8,000 characters, and is grouped in the “human drama” (ヒューマンドラマ) category. If you are like me, and haven’t heard of this word before, it basically means works that focus on… Read More »

Japanese short story review: 「緩慢な表象と虚ろな幻想」”Unreliable Symbol, Hollow Illusion” by 藤村由紀 (Yuki Fujimura)

Recently I reviewed the site “小説家になろう” which is where you can find thousands of free Japanese novels and short stories of various genres. One thing I’ve realized (again) when looking for Japanese stories to read is that I’m quite picky about the types of stories I read. I try to stay away from things that sound too commonplace, like… Read More »

Japanese site review for free online novels: 「小説家になろう」

Being very much into books since I was young, especially fiction novels, one of my long-term goals in studying Japanese has been to read as many Japanese novels as possible, gradually increasing my speed and reading comprehension of Japanese works to that of English. Over many years, I’ve made much progress on this, to the point… Read More »

Need something translated from Japanese to English?

In the process of writing this blog, one thing I’ve discovered is that I enjoy the challenge of translating from Japanese to English. To that end, I’ve decided to put out a call for translation requests. I’m open to translating anything including portions of Manga, TV dramas, movies, novels, or newspapers. The only requirement is… Read More »

Language goals help foreign language study

One thing that is certain about foreign language study is you have to learn about many different types of things: reading, writing, grammar, conversation, culture, etc. If you are taking a formal language class at a college or similar place, the teacher will guide you to to a proper balance between all these topics through lectures, choice… Read More »