Studying Japanese using Japanese books written for children is always something I suggest to leaners who are in the beginner or intermediate levels. As long as you pick a book that isn’t too difficult (you can start with baby books to be safe) you will some good reading practice, and also the satisfaction of actually reading a… Read More »
Sometime back, I mentioned that I recommend reading children’s books in a foreign language as a good way to experience native-level content that isn’t too difficult. For Japanese, this is especially useful since you will have very little, if any, kanji to worry about, which is one stumbling block when reading Japanese books. I’ve read a great… Read More »
Recently I went on a long plane trip where I knew I wouldn’t have network for a few hours, and since I was planning on reading and/or translating during the flight, I needed a good Japanese dictionary mobile app that I knew would work offline. I ended up downloading a few, but the one I… Read More »
Setting your computer, smartphone, and tablet to Japanese is a great way to expand your vocabulary in a natural way, using words in context instead of a dry vocabulary list. This means both the OS itself, as well as the applications or games you are using (sometimes the setting of these things is linked, sometimes… Read More »
I’ll have to just come out and admit it: of all of the books I have read there is a small group I never made it to the end of, including both Japanese and English works. One of these is Kenji Miyazawa’s (宮沢賢治) “Night on the Galactic Railroad” (銀河鉄道の夜) which was a deeply moving story when… Read More »
(Update: Reajer has shut down so I have removed the links in this article, but will leave the article for historical purposes for the time being.) Recently I found about the site Reajer.com, which at first seems strangely named, but makes more sense when you see it is a combination of the words “Reader” and… Read More »
Having become a member of the streaming service Crunchyroll a few months ago, I’ve sampled a few anime series, but for over half of them I ended up bored and never made it to the end. One exception was “Time of Eve” which I reviewed the other day. Besides anime, Crunchyroll also has a few live-action… Read More »
Of the last five books I’ve read, two were in English and three in Japanese. The English ones were both pretty good (one biography, one fantasy), but since they had little to do with Japanese I haven’t posted reviews for them here. The first two Japanese books were pretty mediocre, so I decided against writing reviews of them as well.… Read More »
Recently I’ve been checking out a few new anime on the online streaming service Crunchyroll while I take part in my free trial there. I think I’ve written about this in a past post or two, but after watching anime for 5 or 10 years (or even longer) I started to get tired of the same… Read More »
I generally try to keep posts on this blog focused on Japanese culture or language, but once in a while I’ll post someting a bit off topic. This is one of those posts, but I hope you enjoy it. Actually, there is a small connection to Japan which I’ll talk about near the end. As my family and… Read More »