Blog - Japanese

How We Made Our Japanese Lessons Easier

March 30, 2014:  Imagine that you don’t know any Japanese and I ask you to repeat a Japanese phrase that is 10 syllables long.  It will be very difficult for you if not impossible. Now imagine for a minute that you don’t know any Italian.  If I ask you to . . . 
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Differences Around Japan.

Different Countries in One In almost every country in the world, things are going to be different in different areas of that country. Even in a country as young as the US there are very big differences between different areas. Japan is no exception. Japan wasn’t a unified country until . . . 
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First Impressions

First arriving When I first got to Japan I was at the airport in Osaka. I had a layover. That was my first impression of Japan. Pretty standard, actually. When I got to my final destination, it was night and I was exhausted. I stepped out of the airport and . . . 
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How to Learn Japanese at Language101.com

The meanings of hints and explanations in the lessons In the Japanese lessons, there are a number of explanatory notes to help students. Japanese grammar is quite different than that of English. There are some things that have no equivalent in English, so a creative workaround was necessary. 
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How to Learn Japanese

by David Ockey Before I came to Japan I had studied Japanese in college for 3 1/2 years. When I came to Japan, I could say virtually nothing! I could say my name, where I was from and “The apple is on the table.” To this day, I have not . . . 
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Classifiers (how to count things)

Classifiers or Counters   In Japanese, they use a type of grammar word called a counter or classifier. This way of speaking exists in many eastern Asian languages.   In English and many other languages, there are ways to indicate plural. For example, one person two people. In Japanese, that’s . . . 
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Sound Words

What’s that sound?   When you study a new language, you always learn the proper way of communicating. But when you learned your mother tongue, you learned to express yourself, in good ways and bad!   Each language has a special way of expressing specific ideas and feelings: that particular . . . 
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