hmmn

I begin Japanese class tomorrow, paying (handsomely) for the privilege or torture of gaining some modicum of proficiency in what I think is the most challenging part of integrating into a new culture, speaking its language. So it’s time to buckle up and knuckle down and get down to brass tacks about Japanese. (Hmmn, I [...]

Most first time visitors to Japan remark on the amount of vending machines in the country. I surely did. Like pubs in England, there appears to be at least one, and sometimes more, on every single corner. Across the street from where I live, there were actually two, until a few months ago when one [...]

One could say that Japanese is a very absorbent langange, meaning that it has taken, appropriated, and made its own countless number of loan words, or gairaigo as they are known in Japanese. Most gairaigo entered the language from Chinese 1500 years ago, with a certain amount also coming in slightly more recent times from [...]

I apologize for the paucity of posts lately, I’ve been trying to kick up my Japanese language studies up a notch and this and work and some good ol’ offline reading has put the blog on the temporary back-burner. In the meantime, you could do a lot worse for yourself than to check out the [...]

If I wanted to start a blog — or concentrate this one — on the Japanese language, I would have more than enough material for it to thrive. Among the many adjustments or changes one has to make when living as a foreigner in Japan, there are few as challenging, frustrating, demanding, demoralizing, exasperating — [...]