There are some Japanese words that act like little arrows. They are pointing devices that can be used to indicate a specific part of the wider context of what is being said. Some examples in English are “here” and “there,” “this” and “that,” “me” and “you.” But Japanese does this ...
Today we will introduce various meanings and usages of the transitive verb 出（だ）す (to take something out).
USJ Co. opened a new attraction area based on the "Harry Potter" movie series at its Universal Studios Japan theme ...
In the 1981 novel “Red Dragon” — the first Thomas Harris thriller featuring archvillain Hannibal “the Cannibal” Lecter — the Sino-Japanese ideograph 中 (read naka or chū, and meaning center or middle) makes an appearance. It is composed of a rectangle with a line ...
Today, we will introduce the adjective おかしい (funny/strange), and compare it with another adjective おもしろい (funny/interesting).
More than 3 million children under the age of 5 die annually of malnutrition, the U.N. food agency and World Health Organization said on June 12. "Malnutrition is responsible for about half of all child deaths under 5 years of age, causing over 3 ...
A Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker apologized on June 23 for shouting a sexist remark at a female colleague from Your Party while she was asking questions about maternity support measures during a plenary session of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly.
One of the things the Japanese media love to discuss is kazoku no hōkai (家族の崩壊, collapse of the family) — an evergreen topic that’s been around since the late 1960s, a time when most urban Japanese families could first afford a television. Academics and ...
Today, we will introduce the expression X(verb)っぱなし, comparing the expression X(verb)まま.
Much has been made of the alleged difficulty of the Japanese language for non-native and even native speakers. My personal impression is that this view is most commonly cherished by two types of people: those who don’t know much Japanese (or any at all), ...
Today we will introduce some expressions that describe the behaviors, physical features or attributes that characterize a person and X(noun)らしいY(noun) is one of these expressions, as in Ms. Tamachi's 男（おとこ）らしい人（ひと）( a manly person) in Situation 1, or as in 先生（せんせい）らしい態度（たいど）(The attitude that is appropriate ...
The world's oldest man died at the age of 111 in New York on June 8, leaving a Japanese man, also aged 111, as the world's oldest.
I first started studying Japanese the summer after my first year of college. I was still promising my parents that I would take the med school prerequisites and eventually become a doctor, but I knew going in to college that all I really wanted ...
Today, we will introduce the use of がる/たがる, which shows a person's desire or feeling.
