I think it’s fair to say that polite language (敬語, keigo) is one of the most difficult things to master in the Japanese language. Polite language includes the basic desu/masu forms that students generally learn early on, but there are also more advanced forms of polite language with varying nuances (ex: 召し上がる、お目にかかる). For the purposes… Read More »
The other day I had a revelation about the difference between studying a foreign language by choice (using classes, textbooks, etc.), and being forced to learn it in an immersive environment (like at home or on the job)––in the former you always have the option to quit, whereas in the latter you don’t, or it’s… Read More »
In this post I’d like to discuss Hitori Saito（斎藤一人), a man who is somewhat famous in Japan these days. Hitori Saito is the entrepreneur behind Ginza Marukan (銀座まるかん), a successful cosmetics and health food business. He also has a large number of books (many available on Amazon Japan, what you could call 啓蒙書 or “enlightenment… Read More »
The Japanese word “gaman”, often written in kanji as 我慢 (or sometimes in hiragana as がまん)、is one of those words that seems conceptually simple, but doesn’t always have an easy English equivalent. “Gaman” is fundamentally about suppressing or putting up with some emotion or desire. Similarly, it can also have a nuance of enduring of… Read More »
The other day I came across a recently-started blog about learning Japanese that talked about how easy Japanese pronunciation was. This really frustrated me, but my search for a way to leave a friendly comment to the author ended in failure, so someday you may come across that post (and others like it). After over… Read More »
Compared to English, I feel that Japanese is a grammatically pure language, meaning that there are less complex grammar rules, and those rules can be used more freely without becoming ungrammatical or awkward. For example, Japanese has much fewer verb tenses than English, and factors such as the subject are not taken into account when… Read More »
Lately I’ve been trying to write articles that go deeply into a single expression or word. In this post I’d like to focus on the word “yoroshiku”, which is often written in Japanese using hiragana (よろしく). It also can be written in kanji as 宜しく or occasionally in katakana as ヨロシク. The word yoroshiku is… Read More »
The other day I got a comment from a reader asking about if I knew anywhere to meet Japanese singles in Portland. Although I don’t typically talk about this sort of topic, it is related enough to Japan/Japanese and I have some experience in this area myself, so I thought I would put down my… Read More »
In this post, I’d like to focus on the word 相談 (そうだん / soudan) for two reasons: it’s high frequency in business-level Japanese and the fact it doesn’t have a great single-world (one-size-fits-all) translation in English. I’d like to begin the explanation by giving the Japanese definition of the word from Dictionary Goo, followed by… Read More »
Libraries are great places, not just because of the wonderful books you can discover there, but also because of the wonderful movies that are just waiting to be discovered. I recently came across “Welcome to the Space Show” (宇宙ショーへようこそ), an anime movie made in 2010 by a studio I had never heard of (A-1 Pictures),… Read More »