This article is part of the series on my July 2018 trip to Japan. Please see the table of contents page for other articles in this series as they are posted. While I have been interested in Japan’s culture as far back as I can remember, as you can probably tell from this blog it… Read More »
This article is part of the series on my July 2018 trip to Japan. Please see the table of contents page for other articles in this series as they are posted. In Japanese, the word kokuminsei (国民性) roughly translates to “the national character” and represents certain proclivities or characteristics of a certain race of people.… Read More »
This article is part of the series on my July 2018 trip to Japan. Please see the table of contents page for other articles in this series as they are posted. As I mentioned previously, we decided on staying at the Narita View Hotel for a single day at the beginning and the end of the… Read More »
This article is part of the series describing my July 2018 trip to Japan. Please see the table of contents page for other articles in the series as they are posted. We started searching for plane tickets far in advance and ended up purchasing them from Delta nearly 6 months ahead of time. Since it… Read More »
I recently returned from a trip to Japan that I mentioned a previous post. As I’ve done for some other trips, I’ve decided to write a series of articles about my experiences on this trip, in the hope that it will be of interest to others. In this first article, I’ll give a brief overview… Read More »
In the near future I’ll be traveling to Japan on vacation, and since it has been 3 years since my last trip (in 2015 which I documented here in great detail), I’m really looking forward to it. While I am hoping this trip will generate some great content for this blog, those article(s) will take… Read More »
Twitter is a form of social media that took me some time to figure out, although I guess I still have a lot to learn, both as a consumer and generator of content. While I still debate the usefulness of reading random thoughts of famous people, there’s no doubt that getting a real-time stream of… Read More »
Emphasis on manners and politeness is one of the key characteristics of both Japanese culture as well as an integral part of the language itself Beginners generally start with basic phrases like “ありがとう” (arigatou), “ごめん” (gomen), and “どういたしまして” (dou itashimashite), but eventually learn better ways to express themselves in a variety of situations. In this… Read More »
As part of the simple marketing effort for my latest book, “Classic Japanese Fairy Tales”, I have been searching out people on Goodreads to see if they are interested in reading the book and writing a review. While I don’t want to spend a huge amount of time marketing (frankly, I enjoy translation a great… Read More »
Generally, I try to focus on fiction works in both my reading and translation of Japanese. It’s not that I don’t enjoy non-fiction, it’s just that I have limited time and fiction is usually more relaxing and interesting for me. However, I recently had an opportunity to read through the book 「脳が若返る！大人の古典・名文暗唱ドリル」 compiled by 篠原菊紀 (Kikunori… Read More »