Month: August 2012

Bowing is an important form of social communication in Japan. Whether it's a short sumimasen accompanied by a brief lowering ...

Today is the "birthday" of Hatsune Miku, the popular Vocaloid singer that has come to represent Japan in the eyes ...

It's interesting to look at first impressions of a new country. When I came to Japan in 1991, I was ...

After several years of intense negotiations, the ruling Democratic Party of Japan was able to push through a bill that ...

Today is the start of the 2012 Summer Paralympics, where thousands of athletes will show off their athletic skills and ...

One unique aspect of the Japanese language is the great difference between male and female speech, including gender-specific pronouns, e.g. ...

Quick, what's the square root of five? I have no idea, but my wife knows: it's 2.2360679. How about the ...

Perceptions are always fun to explore. The other day I made a lunch date with Mrs. J-List at a nice ...

Over the weekend we got a new car, a Mazda CX-5. It's a fun and sporty small SUV that seemed ...

J-List has a popular Facebook page as well as a Twitter feed, and I sometimes like to throw out questions ...

The relationship between Japan and the English language is a long and complex one. Everyone studies the language for six ...

One interesting word of Japanese is gaishi-kei, a word that means "foreign capital company" and which describes firms from America ...

When learning Japanese, there are various yardsticks students will use to measure their progress. Are you able to converse normally ...

Speaking of cats, I've written before about how much the Japanese love them, regularly turning the furry felines into "Internet ...

Today's interesting word of Japanese is guuzen (goo-zen), which means "coincidence." I don't know why, but there seems to be ...

One of the interesting aspects of Japan is that it's one of the most pro-American countries on the planet, with ...

All things considered, Japan is a pretty safe country to live in, generally free from a lot of things that ...

One of the proudest days in the lives of parents is going shopping with their child to buy a school ...

Yesterday I took a trip to Tokyo to take advantage of Obon, when half the city leaves for their home ...

Last time I talked about Obon, the Japanese Buddhist holiday in which families welcome the souls of departed family members ...

I've learned a few things about the Japanese during my time here. They generally think that every foreigner is tall ...

There's an interesting Japanese news-and-discussion program on Saturdays called Yasuhiro Tase's Weekly News Report, where the important news stories of ...

We're right in the middle of Obon (pronounced "oh, bone"), an important four-day Buddhist holiday during which Japanese return to ...

One thing serious learners of a language need to have in place are concrete strategies for their success. What's fun ...