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January 2019

There is no such thing as a Japanese cat.

I made a little bed for my cat. It consists of a bamboo basket and one of her favorite blankets. She is currently curled up in it sleeping, and I have no intention or desire to change that fact. But I was looking at her, and I realized an important fact: my cat could never be Japanese. She’s not even American. She’s a cat, and she will always be only a cat. She may understand some English words, and even sometimes choose to listen to them (I can only wish),… Read More »There is no such thing as a Japanese cat.

Find the Good

Today I’m going to write about something that’s on my mind that is not about Japanese at all. I suppose it could be tangentially, but let’s just say it’s not. Like many in my country, I’ve been inundated lately with bad news. I don’t mean bad news in the sense that it’s bad from a qualitative standpoint – some of it’s actually been pretty good. But I mean it’s bad from a quality standpoint – the news is just bad. It’s badly sourced, badly presented, badly received – just everything… Read More »Find the Good

Road of Resistance

I have recently stumbled upon this particular song by Babymetal, which may have become one of my all time favorite songs and/or pieces of all time.  And that’s saying something considering I have a classical background and also rank Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto #3 as one of my favorite pieces of all time.   The Japanese are in a very real way not very innovative.  There is little that has come out of their country or culture that they can truly say originated there.  True, there are a few things, and… Read More »Road of Resistance

Verb endings

One of the things that confused me the most about Japanese when I first started to learn was the difference between “desu” and “masu”. On first teaching a student Japanese, the teachers have to make a tradeoff at the very beginning.  Do they want to teach how the language works?  Or do they want to teach in such a way that the student can use what they know immediately without pissing people off with rookie mistakes in politeness level, etc.?  Most teachers seem to do the latter, but after starting… Read More »Verb endings

Japan’s Checkered Past

Many years ago, I was taking piano lessons as a late teen.  My teacher was an older Filipino woman who was a child (or a teenager, perhaps) during the Japanese occupation of the Phillipines. She hated the Japanese.  Or at least she struggled to not hate the Japanese.  She told me horrible stories, and honestly I couldn’t blame her for how she felt.  Obviously, that was not my experience, but there are many people and countries out there who remember a Japan that was not an exporter of cool media… Read More »Japan’s Checkered Past

Never fast enough…

I continue to have really mixed feelings about my progress in Japanese.  In some ways I know that I am leaps and bounds ahead of where I was before – I can actually have a coherent – but basic – conversation, and I know quite a few more kanji and jyukugo than ever.  And even more, I’m able to start making connections between kanji and words that I couldn’t previously – actually sounding out jyukugo and being right half the time on how to pronounce them. Which is probably already… Read More »Never fast enough…