I picked P.G.Oneill’s “Japanese Respect Language” because I hadn’t seen too many Japanese textbooks focused exclusively on respectful language, which is arguably one of the most difficult aspects of Japanese to master. At the time when I decided to get it I remember thinking the term “respect language” had an unfamiliar ring to it, having usually… Read More »
In the continuing quest to improve my Japanese reading skills and experience various facets of Japanese culture, I’ve been reading different types of books over the last few years. The genres range from children’s picture books to classics like Ningen Shikkaku. My latest challenge was the book “オレたちバブル入行組” (Oretachi baburu nyuukougumi) by Jun Ikeido (池井戸潤), which began serialization… Read More »
In the age of the internet and mobile devices, when there is a need to look up the meaning of a word in a foreign language the average person is likely to use a cell phone, tablet, or desktop computer. For Japanese language specifically, the free mobile dictionary apps I have tried are pretty mediocre,… Read More »
A few weeks ago I entered in a contest on Haiku Girl’s blog and was lucky enough to win “Japan Journeys: Famous Woodblock Prints of Cultural Sights in Japan”, by Andreas Marks (published by Tuttle Publishing who coordinated with Haiku Girl to run this contest). This book contains around 200 Japanese woodblocks of famous scenic areas… Read More »
In the age of the internet, studying any major world language should be much easier than it was several decades ago, when technology wasn’t nearly as advanced. We now have access to hundreds of free dictionaries online, sites how to learn our language of choice, and of course web sites written by natives for natives.… Read More »
In the last few years, the frequency that I see movies has dropped considerably, so in order for me to rematch a movie it has to be pretty darn good. Mamoru Hosada’s “Summer Wars”, released in 2009, is one such film which I immensely enjoyed the second time around. I had alluded to this movie in… Read More »
As part of my daily commute I’ve been listening to various Japanese podcasts from NHK’s podcast series Suppin. I usually get into one of them, and listen to it exclusively for a few weeks until I’ve heard every episode. With Gen’s modern Japanese corner, things started out badly because after listening to an episode or two I felt totally… Read More »
This time I’d like to review a movie I just finished watching, “陽だまりの彼女”, which I would categorize as an offbeat romance. To start off with a linguistic note, the word 陽だまり is a little tricky to translate to English because there really isn’t a good match, at least using a single word. Here 陽 (hi) means… Read More »
It’s been some time since I’ve written an article about bilingual education, so I thought I would review “The Gifted”, a book published last year. This book is about the Japanese boy genius Sho Okawa, who moved to Canada when he was 5 and was declared as “Gifted” at age 9. Only five years later, Sho… 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 »