Tracking the Tengu

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What are tengu?
You may have heard of them as “forest goblins”, perhaps “mountain demons”, or maybe even “birdmen”. Regardless of how you try to interpret these magical sprites, the Japanese tengu play an important role in both the traditional Japanese mythological landscape and modern pop-culture alike.
I was first introduced to tengu as red-faced masks [...]

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How the Japanese lost Bismarck: The Navajo Language

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Mark C. Baker’s The Atoms of Language starts out with an interesting story of how the Navajo language aided the U.S. Marine Corps in WWII against the Japanese.
Deep mysteries of language are illustrated by an incident that occurred in 1943, when the Japanese military was firmly entrenched around the Bismark Archipelago. American pilots had [...]

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Gotta catch ‘em all: Interesting sentences

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I haven’t really thoroughly explained my own study process, but, to put it simply, I collect sentences that highlight content that I want to internalize. (I go for “i + 1″, which is the level just beyond my current reach.)
I don’t limit myself to individual words in sentences, but expand my search into strong [...]

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Recommended Book: Effective Japanese

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Kodansha’s Effective Japanese Usage Dictionary truly lives up to its title, and I really recommend it to pre-intermediate through pre-advanced level learners.
It’s basically a book of explanations between the differences of commonly confused Japanese terms. The explanations (which are provided in both Japanese and English!) are then highlighted with a ton of example sentences [...]

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What the Textbooks Don’t Teach: Fighting words!

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Learning Japanese in a classroom setting, you probably won’t be getting into too many heated arguments, unless your class resembles Yankumi’s 3D. If you stick only to the textbooks, your Japanese will reflect a world through rose-colored glasses. Don’t get me wrong, you definitely need to know how to search for an apartment, [...]

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Top Ten Successful Expats in Japan

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These days, there are a lot of foreign expats who are making inroads into Japanese society. This is a list of who I consider to be the top ten successful expats (or former expats) in Japan, complete with fun facts and media.
The list includes ‘Gaijin Talent’ (外人タレント, shortened to 外タレ), bloggers, journalists, game translators, [...]

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More fun Japanese stuff

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I have another “What the textbooks don’t teach” post coming up soon, but today I’d just like to share some more fun Japanese mnemonics.
傷がずきずき疼く。 [きずがずきずきうずく。] The wound throbbed with pain.
渋谷はたしかに渋いや！ [しぶやはたしかにしぶいや！] Shibuya really is “bitter”. (This one is my creation, and I’m quite fond of it having mixed in some Osaka-ben. I don’t [...]

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Difficulty of Japanese in perspective

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I always make a point of telling my undergrad students that the difficulty of learning a language is relative. I give them an example, typically using kanjigo (漢字語) – 信号無視 (shingou-mushi) versus 신호무시 (shino-mushi). Literally, it means “traffic signal ignore”. I then compare it to its English equivalent – ‘run a red [...]

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Gokusen DVD – Only 1 Seller!

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Get it while it’s hot:
There’s a seller on Amazon.com who’s selling the Complete Gokusen DVD set (all 3 seasons) for just $27.75.

Gokusen is one of my favorite Japanese “dramas” (it’s actually more of a “serial comedy”), and offers loads of “real” Japanese to learn from. Best of all – It’s genuinely funny. Not [...]

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Japanese Observations

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Almost exactly a year ago I touched a little bit upon what the textbooks don’t teach you, with examples like 中途半端 (ちゅうとはんぱ, half-assed) and ド素人 (どしろうと, newbie). There are still countless examples of this kind of real Japanese, and I’d like to get back into them here, time permitting.
For now, I’d just like to [...]

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The 1%

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The success rate of Japanese learners
Most Westerners, in fact the vast majority, who study Japanese will ultimately fail. I only have a general idea based on personal experience and discussion of the topic, but I know that very few of us actually succeed at internalizing the language.
I was discussing this with one particularly successful [...]

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Natural Language – Abstract properties of shape and sound

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I’m interested in this idea of a natural link in the human brain between abstract properties of shape and sound.
Originally put forth by Wolfgang Kohler in the late 1920s, and more recently revived by Ramachandran and Hubbard in 2001, this experiment has quite interesting results:
Look at the image below.

One of the shapes is named ‘bouba’ [...]

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Weblio.jp Introduction

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There are a handful of online dictionaries out there to help Japanese learners along in their studies. That may not sound like a lot (the idiomatic phrase is “only a handful”, afterall), but there are definitely more options than for a language like Korean.
Each system has its own merits. Jisho.org and Nihongodict.com have [...]

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Smart.fm Revisited

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In this look back at Smart.fm, I’ll cover the following topics:

A review of the system
How to attack it
The system as a personal review tool
The benefit of working through multiple goals simultaneously

A brief review of the system
By now, most Japanese learners have heard of Smart.fm (originally branded as iKnow). As a study tool, it’s not [...]

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Why I don’t use Rikaichan

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Rikaichan is an amazingly efficient tool for looking up Japanese words simply by placing the mouse over them on any given website in Firefox. (Or Rikaikun for Chrome) That’s why I don’t use it anymore.
The problem with Rikaichan is that it’s a quick fix – Too quick, in fact. By its very [...]

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A structured sequence of Japanese study

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There is no definitive “correct” way to study language, but some language learners prefer more structure than others. Here’s one progression of materials (both free online resources and traditional textbooks) that I generally recommend.
Absolute Beginners
Goal: Learn the kana systems and get off roman characters as soon as possible.

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