Tag: Japanese language

When foreigners come to Japan, it's natural they'll encounter objects that are common and familiar to Japanese people yet strange ...

It's fun to analyze the way anime, game and manga companies go about creating characters that will win the hearts ...

There are many reasons to like a given anime series, including a truly fresh story approach, characters with endearing moe ...

Over the weekend I took a drive with Mrs. J-List up to the mountains above Karuizawa, the pleasant city in ...

Words are complex things, which naturally won't always match up on a 1:1 basis with words in another language. A ...

As a native English speaker, it's nice that there are so many English loan words in use in Japanese, though ...

Over the past 17 years I've helped raise two great kids who are haafu, half Japanese and half American -- ...

When dealing with other languages there's plenty of potential for words that are similar in sound to become confused in ...

Language reflects the character of the people who use it, and this is definitely true of Japanese. One of the ...

In addition to hay fever season in Japan, it's also time to prepare for the start of the new school ...

Near J-List there's a park I used to frequent with my kids which had two small hills in the center. ...

One convenient thing about the Japanese language is the high number of foreign loan words that are in use, which ...

There are certain benefits to being in Japan, including the ability to go almost anywhere by train and toilets that ...

You never, as they say, forget your first, and I've found this goes for studying kanji, too. While the first ...

It's quite well known that, despite six or more years of studying English, Japanese people aren't always great at communicating ...

Kanji, of course, are the characters that communicate meaning in written Japanese, imported from China around the 4th Century A.D. ...

One of the most enigmatic people in Japan is Johnny Kitagawa, founder of Johnny & Associates (or "Johnny's Jimusho" in ...

While it's generally fun to be a foreigner living in Japan -- the people are nice, the sushi is cheap ...

When you study Japanese, you have to come to grips with the fact that, while the rules that govern how ...

When you live in Japan, you naturally develop a new set of skills in order to survive. Very few streets ...

No matter how careful we might be, cultural misunderstandings are going to happen, like a Japanese homestay student I knew ...

Last time I talked about some of the challenges Japan is facing as its population falls due to a combination ...

Before the new year arrived, I went to Yoshinoya for lunch for my official "last beef bowl of 2012," and ...

Now it's time for a Japanese lesson, with some fun words you might be able to make use of someday. ...