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In the summer of last year, my wife told me (in Japanese) “We need to buy a magic bottle.”
“A what?”
“A magic bottle.”
“What on earth is a magic bottle? and why do we need to buy one?”
Magic Bottle
The word in question here is 魔法瓶 (mahou-bin). The first part 魔法 (mahou) means “magic”, as in [...]

My wife and I went to see cherry blossoms at Himeji castle today. On the way back we ran across this awesome sign:

What a welcoming sign! The Japanese reads お急ぎの方ご利用下さい (o-isogi no kata go-riyou kudasai), which is hilarious in Japanese but translates a little awkwardly to something like “People in a hurry, please [...]

I took a two week vacation to the States and I’m back now.   My infant son got to meet his paternal grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins for the first time.   Good times had by all.
I didn’t do any language study during my vacation, so I came home to a lot of due cards on Anki.  [...]

In the past 8 months or so I have made big changes to the way I study Japanese and it has paid off big-time. I’m still evolving how I study to maximize my learning while staying interested and I thought I’d post a little update on my current study habits.
The biggest change is that [...]

Do you know which months have 30 days and which ones have 31? I don’t. At least not off the top of my head. If I need to know how many days are in a month, and there isn’t a calendar around, I use the knuckle-counting method. It’s not as fast [...]

Chapter 5 of Fight Club is another scene from the testicular cancer support group. At the start of the scene Thomas, one of the members, is telling the group how his ex-wife had her first child (with her new husband). In English, we usually say that a woman “has” a baby and that [...]

I mentioned a few days ago that I finished my first Japanese manga, Doraemon. Normally when I read something in Japanese, I input some sentences into my SRS. I didn’t do this with Doraemon. I was 500+ cards behind in my SRS and I wasn’t ready for more. Well, now my [...]

I finished my first Japanese comic (manga) last week. Most Japanese learners jump into manga pretty early, but I didn’t because comics aren’t that interesting to me. Everyone says they are good study aids though, so I finally gave in and bought the first book of Doraemon. To be honest, I wanted [...]

Last chapter I talked about mumbled Japanese and how it is difficult to pick up with an untrained ear. This time I’m going to look at another sticking point for me: katakana loan words.
Katakana Loan Words
When Japanese borrows words from other languages, naturally it changes those words to fit the Japanese sound system. [...]

Last chapter I talked about some of the interesting differences I found between the English and Japanese versions of Fight Club. This time I’m going to do more of the same. I mentioned before that watching Fight Club in Japanese was difficult for me because my listening comprehension skills are poor. That’s [...]