Vocabulary
- ふぁんた時間: Free Japanese Audio
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September 27th, 2012
Often it’s hard to find really good reading and visual material for beginners through to intimidate Japanese for free. There’s so much on the internet that it can be difficult to get through all the search results to find the good stuff. A series that I have found useful is ふぁんた時間. The site provides free, high quality readings of Japanese stories that can be streamed online or downloaded as an mp3 and played anywhere.
- Sukiya: Beef Bowl Heaven
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March 22nd, 2012
One of the most popular dishes in Japan is beef bowl or gyūdon (牛丼). While there are many places that serve the dish, the two largest chains are – Yoshinoya (吉野家) and Sukiya (すき家).
- 5 Minutes in a Japanese Supermarket
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February 22nd, 2012
After seeing an article on Danny Choo’s excellent website, we decided to pay a visit to the new Rise shopping centre located beside the Futako-tamagawa (二子玉川) station in Tokyo on a trip to Japan late last year. For those of us who live outside of Japan, I thought it would be interesting to see inside a Japanese supermarket and some of the food and beverages for sale.
- Eat & Learn: Yummy Meiji Chocolate
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October 20th, 2011
Having just arrived back from a 10 day trip to Tokyo, we of course had our bags full of all sorts of great stuff including several different varieties of Meiji Chocolate bars. I was meaning to put this up last week and I noticed over the past 7 days that the pile had mysteriously disappeared (eg my wife had eaten them).
- Minitube: Immerse Yourself in Japanese
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August 26th, 2011
One of the best ways to improve your Japanese is to immerse yourself in as much native language material as possible. While it’s easy enough to click around YouTube all day long but having an app right on your desktop that lets you set and forget your daily immersion playlists is pure gold – and recently I found such a beast – Minitube.
- Do you have a J-CLUE?
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July 12th, 2011
The Hiragana Times and J-Clue has teamed up to launch a new test aimed at assessing Japanese language and cultural understanding. J-Clue doesn’t replace the JLPT, it is simply testing a different subset of your language skills. Do you know what konkatsu means? Could you name the traditional Japanese art in which a person sits on a stage and tells a funny story? What does the phrase, “Shiranu ga hotoke,” mean?
- 5 Steps To Ordering a Meal in Japan
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July 8th, 2011
I live in Japan, but barely speak Japanese. I can’t help you with verb conjugation or passing the JLPT. But I have managed to eat! Restaurants in Japan are a culinary and cultural adventure. Knowing how to act is crucial to speaking the language. They’re also great places to practice many facets of conversational Japanese!
- Don’t Be Deaf To Japanese
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May 24th, 2011
One of the (many) mistakes I made when I began learning Japanese was not to listen to anyone actually speaking the language. If your current Japanese study plan doesn’t include any listening comprehension, then it’s time to make the change and stop being deaf to Japanese.
- Just remember…..
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May 6th, 2011
Sometimes I hit the wall and learning Japanese becomes a chore. It doesn’t happen every week or even every month but lack of motivation hits us all at some point. However, it’s the people who push through that wall and continue their studies that will eventually become a Japanese ninja. ^_^
- Tenses: Past and Present
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April 7th, 2011
Tenses are an important part of your Japanese arsenal. They give you the ability to describe the past, present and future. It is sunny today, it was sunny yesterday and it will be sunny tomorrow.