Japanese particles can be tricky because of their many usages and combinations. For example 「で」 can be seen with other particles in the two-particle pair 「では」or 「での」 or even in the 4-particle combination 「ならではの」. On the other hand, the 「を」 particle (written as ‘wo’ or just ‘o’), is one of the most straightforward to learn.… Read More »
This is another post in my Read & Answer series of articles where I give a short passage in Japanese followed by one or more questions to test your understanding. You can see more about this series here, and a list of the other articles in it here. This will be Level 1, which is… Read More »
(Update: I have since republished “Eighteen O’Clock Music Bath” in a larger compilation that you can find here.) Recently I published my second eBook (Volume 2 of the “Science: Hopes & Fears” series) which contains my translation of the classic dystopian tale “Eighteen O’Clock Music Bath” (original title: 「十八時の音楽浴」）by Juza Unno (海野十三), who is acknowledged as… Read More »
This is another post in my Read & Answer series of articles where I give a short passage in Japanese followed by one or more questions to test your understanding. You can see more about this series here, and a list of the other articles in it here. This will be Level 2, which is… Read More »
I’ll be the first to admit that the novel “Boy of Civilization” was a hyoushigai (表紙買い) for me, which basically means I bought it after being attracted by the cover. Not only was it beautiful on its own, but it also reminded me of the cover of “Lagos on a Journey” (旅のラゴス) by Yasutaka Tsutsui.… Read More »
Last year I reviewed Yoko Ogawa’s wonderful novel “Little Bird” and at the time I was even considering translating a small portion of the book for translation practice, and to give English-speaking readers a taste for the style of the book. But I got busy with other articles and translation projects, and never got around… Read More »
Fellow blogger and podcaster John Sensei of Manga Sensei has recently created a Kickstarter for a new Japanese learning app, Japanese Verb Conjugator. Rather than be a jack-of-all-trades app that tries to do everything, this app will target the process of conjugating verbs in Japanese (活用, katsuyou). While I feel verb conjugation is a little… Read More »
This is another post in my Read & Answer series of articles where I give a short dialog in Japanese followed by one or more questions to test your understanding. You can see more about this series here, and a list of the other articles in it here. This will be Level 1, which is… Read More »
Japanese particles are small words packed full with meaning and often don’t have direct parallels to English. In a few past articles I’ve talked about a few particle combinations (での, への, では、and ならではの). In this post I’d like to go over the combination のに (“no ni” or “noni”) which is pretty commonly used. There are… Read More »
This is another post in my Read & Answer series of articles where I give a short dialog in Japanese followed by one or more questions to test your understanding. You can see more about this series here, and a list of the other articles in it here. This will be Level 1, which is… Read More »