The past few days have seen Japan splashed across international headlines as the Japanese deal with the effects of the world’s 5th most powerful earthquake in known history. The 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck the Tohoku region primarily on the northeast coast…
Today we’re continuing our lesson on Japanese suffixes by going over a couple more important suffixes in the Japanese language. Sensei Sensei is a suffix used only with family names as a term of respect. More polite than san, sensei…
In Japan, where politeness in language is so important, suffixes are quite essential. What are suffixes? They’re words that come after other words—in this case, these suffixes are titles of address. A rough English equivalent could be the prefixes “Mr.,”…
If you’ve been teaching yourself Japanese with the grammar lessons on this site, you ought to have a firm grasp on basic counting in Japanese. You’ll need to know those numbers to be able to say the date in Japanese—but…
In Japan, a country in which professional matchmaking (called “omiai“) is still a viable method of meeting your fiance(e) (although a much less often used method than in the past), goukon is a popular method of meeting potential boyfriends or…
As we’ve previously covered, Japan conducts an annual whale hunting expedition despite the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling asking that they do not. Japan always insists the whaling is performed for the purposes of “research,” but a lot…
In the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and the subsequent earthquakes and nuclear power plant issues, the world has gotten a glimpse into the way that the Japanese deal with significant disasters. The fact that there have…
If you plan on spending time in Japan or around Japanese-speaking people, it’s better that you over prepare than under prepare. Knowing how to talk about your health problems with your host family or a physician can help you get…
On Friday, we discussed Osaka as “the nation’s kitchen.” Today we’ll talk instead about Osaka as the home of comedy. But first, we’ll take a closer look at Osaka–ben, or the Osakan dialect. Just like in the U.S., where an…
When it comes to seeing a movie in cinemas, you probably don’t think the experience differs much from country to country. However, seeing a movie in Japan is a bit different than seeing a movie in the US, for example—and…