School trips in Japan are something else. We’ve all been on a day trip to the zoo or a museum. Perhaps you don’t learn much on the trip. But school trips in Japan, especially those for high school students, are done by almost every school and last a whole week….
The te form is one of those topics that so many Japanese learners never get past. It involves some funky table, or a song, and it can’t really be translated into English. It ends up being the graveyard for many a Japanese learner. To spoil the ending, I never really…
If you’ve ever watched Japanese TV, you might be surprised at the amount of subtitles that you get on almost any show. The subtitles are not limited to the traditional closed caption subtitles for the hard of hearing, but are put on the show itself by the production team. There…
Counting and its various topics is generally going to be one of those areas that you’ll probably never get truly comfortable with in a second language. That doesn’t mean you should give up on the topic, but it does allow you to put into perspective what is achievable, and more…
Although social media is mostly a waste of time, from a language learning point of view, it’s a great way to get involved in conversations with natives and see the back and forth that can result. Seeing as most journalist’s attempt at research and investigation or original story writing involves…
School sports in Japan is an interesting setup, and I was fortunate enough to go to two different schools during my 10 month exchange in Japan, and of course even between schools in Japan there are large differences. I joined the table tennis club, 卓球部「たっきゅうぶ」, although there were many other…
I’m a reader. I like to read about technology, finance, politics, or anything that is well-written. One of the benefits to reading is you come across some fancy name for something that you figured already had a fancy name but you just didn’t know how to look it up. That…
One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve been studying Japanese, is that the influence of Buddhism in Japanese culture is massive. Of course, this filters down to the language as well, and any attempt at reading about Japanese history is going to throw you into a world of complex kanji and…
Sometimes you may find yourself learning a new word or grammar point, and then see it nonstop for the next week. No matter what your read, or what Japanese you listen to, you just keep seeing that same point. How is it you never noticed it before? Was this such…
If you want to improve the speed of a second language, you need to stop translating in your head. Sure, you can watch a TV show in Japanese and then pause it every few seconds to take in what people say, but you’re going to be pretty useless in an…