Quickly getting bored with academic learning materials, I always search for new ways to use Japanese without actually living in Japan. Typically, the more fun the activity is the more positive feedback there is and the more likely it will continue. One game which is entertaining and requires no physical props or materials is game of… Read More »
One great thing about having kids is you get to see all the cutesy videos made for them. When my son was very young he was into the “Super Simple Learning” videos on Youtube, especially the “Twinkle Twinkle little star” one, which has great visuals and sound. Bringing up my son bilingually Japanese, I also… Read More »
In my last post here I talked about a modern first person pronoun in Japanese, “onara”. In the beginning of the post I alluded to the fact it was the first of the month, but in fact it was the first of April, which happens to be “April Fools Day” in America (I’m not sure… Read More »
(Please note, this post was an April fools joke.) As it’s now the first of the month, in this post I’d like to focus on a first-person pronoun I’ve been hearing alot lately. While modern English has pretty much only “I”, Japanese has many of these words including “boku”, “watashi”, “atashi”, and even “washi” (and that’s… Read More »
Monocle is a magazine whose cover design has caught my eye now and then at the local bookstore, though usually when I leaf through it the topics don’t quite match my interests, with stuffy topics like world affairs. However, the cover of the most recent issue (#81) was a big picture of Doremon, the famous… Read More »
In Japanese, differences in position, experience, and age are considered very important and are built into the language itself in the form of words that indicate where someone is with respect to others. This concept is expressed in the terms 先輩 (senpai), which refers to someone older or with more experience, and 後輩 (kouhai), which… Read More »
In a previous post I’ve talked about the NHK Japanese podcasts, which are freely available online for a variety of programs. I’ve jumped around listening to a few of these, but lately have really gotten into one called “Oogiri corner” (大喜利コーナー）that is billed as “The earliest in Japan” (日本一早い) and is part of the “Suppin”… Read More »
As we all know, one of the best ways to learn a foreign language is immerse yourself in an environment where it is beneficial, even necessary to communicate in that language. One of the pitfalls of this type of situation is that there is always the chance of miscommunication, either because you make a mistake… Read More »
In Japanese, you can use the word 興味 (‘kyoumi’) to talk about interest in something. It is typically coupled with the が or は, plus the verb for inanimate existence, ある (‘aru’), or some derivation of it (negative form, polite form, etc.). Let’s start with a simple example: それは全然興味がありません。 I am not interested in that at… Read More »
Recently I happened to stop by Kinokuniya, one of the better Japanese bookstores in San Jose. I wanted to buy a few things there to read, but since I had done practically no research before arriving I ended up picking up the first issue of Hiroya Oku’s “Dog House” base only on the cover art and some text which said something about robots… Read More »