Skip to content

What Exactly are Kanji?

What Exactly are Kanji?

I think one of the most difficult things for a westerner to wrap their minds around is kanji. I don’t mean memorizing the kanji or their readings, but exactly what they are in the first place. We think of them as words, but I don’t really think that’s what they are, not really.  I think they are, instead, concepts, and those concepts are represented as logographs.  But I think you don’t really directly translate a kanji.  I think you take the concept that the kanji represents, crystallize a contextual meaning… Read More »What Exactly are Kanji?

Crisis of Confidence

I am a reasonably accomplished early-40s man.  I can play the piano reasonably competently.  I know how to program in quite a few programming languages.  I became an expert at the Linux operating system.  I have studied, to varying degrees, math and electronics, and I consider myself to be of significantly above-average intelligence.  I have thoughts about theology that make pastor friends tell me that they remind me of C.S Lewis, or even Augustine. All this is to say that trying to learn Japanese is probably the first thing in… Read More »Crisis of Confidence

Interesting Language Tidbits

On my previous post Understanding Spoken Japanese, I talked about how Japanese is highly dependent on context, and I used the word 行きます as an example of this.  A nice commenter pointed out that in many cases, a different word would be used, signifying “I’m entering now” rather than “I’m going now”.  This commenter agreed that both could be used, but pointed out that one would be used over the other in most cases. This got me thinking – what is the difference between these two phrases?  Both have essentially the same… Read More »Interesting Language Tidbits

Monday English Colloquialism Corner #1: Goldilocks

Goldilocks and the Three Bears Sometimes you will hear an English speaker say something like “We’re looking for that Goldilocks sweet spot”.  What does that mean? As you can see from the story, Goldilocks is a fairy tale, which is a story told to children at a very young age.  It usually has a “moral” to it, but it also sometimes is just a short story meant to entertain children.  It’s usually read at bedtime, so this means that most people know the stories, and the stories have entered our… Read More »Monday English Colloquialism Corner #1: Goldilocks

Logan Paul: An Apology on Behalf of my People

I’m a bit late to the party on this one, I think the kerfluffle happened before I even started blogging.  But I want to chime in on this anyway, because I think it’s really important for me to. Logan Paul is (or, maybe, was) a YouTuber who was known for his over-the-top style of videos.  That’s fine.  Logan Paul went to Japan.  That’s fine. Logan Paul managed to get himself in so much trouble he’ll likely be arrested if he ever sets foot there again. He took a video in the… Read More »Logan Paul: An Apology on Behalf of my People

Ganbatte

“Ganbatte” is a word that, in Japanese, means “try your best”.  It seems to be a very frequently used word, particularly in competitive contexts, such as variety shows, etc.  But looking at the context in which it’s used, I don’t think it translates very well.  The reason is, as with many things, cultural. In English, “Try your best” has a connotation of “Do the very best that you can, and it’s okay if you still fail”.  I mean, obviously you don’t want to fail, but English speakers tend to have a… Read More »Ganbatte

Sunday Song #2: What is Love (もーニング娘)

Life is hard, with many contrasting things, all fighting with each other for supremacy.  Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you cry.  Sometimes you are burning with passion for something, sometimes the passion leaves.  But through it all, you have to ask yourself – is what I’m doing helping or hurting? If I can’t even make one person understand me, how can I change the world?  If I can hurt someone, how can it be said that I’m making the world better? This is something that many people are grappling with today,… Read More »Sunday Song #2: What is Love (もーニング娘)

Understanding Spoken Japanese

Understanding spoken Japanese – especially when done at speed – is hard. It’s hard for several reasons, but I think the primary reason is that the Japanese language tends to take a lot of shortcuts in speaking.  Vowels are much more important in Japanese language than in English – especially considering the fact that every syllable ends in one – and they tend to run together.  Couple that with the fact that vowels are often silent simply because the syllables are spoken so quickly that they kind of run together, and… Read More »Understanding Spoken Japanese

Appropriation

One of the big bugaboos of western culture right now seems to be the idea of “cultural appropriation”.  I, personally, don’t give a toss about cultural appropriation – not only do I not consider it a thing, I consider it something that – except in the most egregious of cases – is just the product of people looking for offense and with too much time on their hands.  (And by egregious, I mean something about on the level of cosplaying as Al Jolson). That being said, if one can manage to… Read More »Appropriation

Nobita

I’ve been debating this one for a bit, but I think I’m going to wade in anyway. There’s a YouTube channel called “Find Your Love in Japan”, a channel run by a YouTuber named “Nobita”.  He recently made several videos about how he feels about “Black” people and their perceived attitudes. I’m not going to go into how I feel about what he said to any degree, for obvious reasons.  Suffice it to say he had a few valid points and a few not so valid ones, and the valid… Read More »Nobita