I had gotten a recommendation that Jiro Akagawa was a good author so I decided on trying his work “Reserved Seat: Short short oukoku” (指定席〜ショートショート王国）published by Kobunsha in 2012 (digital version in 2015), which is a compendium of 32 short stories. They are generally on the very short side, tending to be under 10 pages each.… Read More »
I’ve seen my share of Japanese movies, especially romances. There are those with dramatic tragic settings (like a fatal heart condition,etc.), or those with a fantasy element, but what most of these movies share in common is they usually extremely unrealistic. What I loved about “My pretend girlfriend”, released in 2014 by Suurkiitos, is that it… Read More »
On a recent trip to Portland, Oregon, we stopped by a Powell’s books to see what they had to offer. Besides having an amazing selection of many types of books, they actually had a section of Japanese books, most if not all which were used books. It was no Kinokuniya, but as you may know… Read More »
“Eternal First Love” is Japanese romance film from 2010 starring Saki Aibu and Takashi Tsukamoto. We originally decided to try watching it since it was free on Amazon prime. Interestingly, the original title is “恋するナポリタン 世界で一番おいしい愛され方” which is a pretty long, awkward title, and I actually like the English title much better, which is very rare.… Read More »
“Tokyo: Capital of Cool” is a travel book published last year by Tuttle which focuses on one of the most famous and well-known parts of Japan – the city of Tokyo. Since there are probably hundreds of books out there which provide travel information about Tokyo, a book has to be pretty unique in some way in… Read More »
Forums (also called “message boards” or “question and answer sites”) are one of the great things about the internet since they allow fast, global discussion about nearly any topic you can imagine. Discussions on foreign languages for learners is no exception, and there are many things to ask about: word meanings, grammar, what sounds “natural”, culture, etc.… Read More »
My family and I are big fans of Studio Ghibli films and have seen a good portion of them (roughly half of their 20 films). A few classics like Totoro and Spirited Away we’ve seen several times. For some time I was eager to see their 2013 animated film “The Wind Rises” (風立ちぬ), but wasn’t… Read More »
In addition to getting my feet wet with freelance translation via Gengo, I am also considering entering one or more translation contests in order to help gain experience, and (if things go well) win a prize or two. I expected a quick google search to yield a bunch of contests, but I found that many of… Read More »
In our trip to Japan this year, we visited many bookstores throughout the country. I love Japanese bookstores not only because I can see what is popular in literary Japan, but also because it’s fun to read the covers and backs of a bunch of books and figure out what type of book each is.… Read More »
“Candy Candy” is a Japanese historical Shoujo (girls) manga written by Keiko Nagita (名木田 恵子) which was originally published in the magazine “Nakayoshi” serially from 1975 to 1979. It was quite popular, and spawned an anime, theatrical show, and several novels. To give an idea of the popularity, around 12 million copies were printed in total for the… Read More »