Month: April 2009

I've written about how speaking a foreign language requires a special "other" sense, which the Japanese call kan (kahn). If ...

Before I came to Japan, I fancied myself a bit of a dessert aficionado. Pumpkin pie with vanilla ice cream ...

The most common word for "foreigner" in Japanese is gaijin, written with the characters for outside + person, although since ...

One aspect of the Japanese language that's fun to study is onomatopoeia, the words we use to describe the sounds ...

There are many things that American houses have which their Japanese counterparts lack, and vice-versa. A Japanese home will generally ...

Japan's export-driven economy is in the doldrums because of the recession, but don't worry -- the Japanese government is ready ...

It's nearly time for Japan's Golden Week, a semi-accidental clustering of holidays that usually fall near each other, which the ...

First, we had server issue that made it impossible to access the site for several hours -- very sorry for ...

In Japanese, there's a whole subset of polite language called keigo which can be quite a challenge for foreigners to ...

My wife bought me a great present the other day: a book featuring all the places to buy yaki-manju in ...

Japan is a fast-moving place, and you never know what new boom is just around the corner. One year, women ...

I've started using Twitter, the famous "micro-blogging" tool that lets you make short observations and send them out in real-time. ...

When humans one day live in space, I'm sure we'll make use of the experience Japan has gained with fitting ...

Over the weekend I went up to Karuizawa, the charming town in the mountains of Nagano Prefecture that serves as ...

Another good option if you're trying to eat in a hurry is to hit a konbini, or convenience store, where ...

My daughter continues her adventures in junior high school, a place of learning and Japanese-style character building. Because her school ...

Do you know what year it is? I often don't, thanks to the Japanese custom of counting years according to ...

Japan is a country that's very focused on safety, and there are many mechanisms in place to keep people from ...

May 5 is Children's Day, a special time for celebrating boy children that's part of the Golden Week holidays. On ...

My daughter has started junior high school, which is a big step in Japan, a kind of medium point between ...

Although Japanese kitchens are well stocked with spoons, forks and knives, most meals in Japan are eaten with chopsticks. Children ...

One interesting aspect of Japan is its closer cultural relationship to its nearby neighbor, China, the ultimate origin of practically ...

Words carry different meanings to different people. For example, the most common word for steamed white rice in Japanese is ...

Is it possible for a person to lose the use of their native language? Studies in linguistics (which I did ...