Getting on the plane at Narita was gut wrenching. The realisation that my Tokyo trip was over had hit me square between the eyes. Real life was beckoning once more. It wasn’t all bad though. What I’d realised whilst in Tokyo was that my Japanese abilities had improved. Massively. I was not only able to [...]
“Mayday, mayday, urgent assistance needed! Mayday. Can anybody hear me?” Only a static grumble. Again. Not a single solitary person has heard my call. I grab for the receiver again, my finger poised to press to the ‘Execute’ button. “This is Omega-JLPT, hearing you loud and clear. Do you copy?” Finally! A response. I hit [...]
So, occasionally, I allow the geek in me to freely roam the streets. It’s a ‘not-very-often-occurrence’, mostly as Mrs Grumbleweed at No 26 gets real scared as he walks passed, so he’s usually kept under close lock and key. Today though, he was permitted to pull together his favourite kanji of the moment. Sad, he [...]
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: my introduction to Japanese came from a desire to learn a language comprised of symbols. Nothing more, nothing less. Before stumbling across Japanese, having always been the avid student of romance languages, I had thought that alphabets were ace and symbols were stupid. How could a [...]
Nature, of course, is vast. However, no matter how it is approached, it is impossible to solely write about nature, without turning to the influences of man. Whether for aesthetic improvement, or for less commendable reasons, man’s hand has intervened so expressively in all of the nature of our planet, that that which once enveloped [...]
Before starting with a personal tutor, I’d been learning Japanese for a good long time, straight from a home study guide. With the over dramatised conversation pieces on the included CD being my only intake of spoken Japanese each week, I was getting to the point where I thought that all Japanese companies had an [...]
Coming home from my Japanese lesson on Thursday, I suddenly realised that what I thought was just a pull in my sweater of learning had actually unravelled, without my knowledge, and an entire arm had fallen off. Apart from the need to get a serious mender on the case, I also thought I’d pose the [...]
Language is fascinating. It’s organic, living, breathing, tangled, misinterpreted, overused, misrepresented, joyous and troublesome. Looking back into history, it seems that most languages have sprawled out from their epicentres, and, wherever people have gone, they have followed, like ivy left to grow of its own accord, assimilating and overtaking everything in their wake. Languages are [...]
Whoop, whoop! Yes, you heard it right: Japanese Shorts is now available through the beautiful iTunes. So, click the banner above and you’ll be taken to the podcast stream (keep away from the fish, they bite a bit..)
Well, if you ever find yourself stuck in the monsoon rain, outside Tokyo train station waiting for a bus, then Lesson 2 in the Japanese Shorts series is really going to sort you out. Otherwise, teach them to your grandmother, she’ll love them, I’m sure.. Don’t forget to leave a comment AND, check out Japanese [...]