Japanese Folk Song on the Sanshin (家庭和合)

Japanese Folk Song on the Sanshin (家庭和合)

Over the last few weeks I have been spending a lot of time preparing for an sanshin performance. For those who don’t know, the sanshin is an traditional three-stringed instrument popular in Okinawa. I started playing earlier this year and ended up joining a サークル (club) in my area. Last week, the サークル (myself not [...]

November 24th, 2009 by Nick 

Reading Japanese Words in Style

Reading Japanese Words in Style

So you finally figured out how to read and write Japanese on your computer (if you haven’t, do this right away). The problem is that the standard fonts for Japanese aren’t very good. In addition to just being plane bad looking or difficult to read, there may occasionally be characters that don’t show up. Since [...]

November 23rd, 2009 by Nick 

Great Video Series to Learn Japanese

Great Video Series to Learn Japanese

I am always on the lookout for good Japanese learning tools. With all the available channels there are a lot of different types products, but to be honest, many fall very short of really teaching you the language. But every once and a while, I happen to stumble across one that really impresses me. What’s [...]

November 18th, 2009 by Nick 

Japanese Pronunciation with Syllabry

Japanese Pronunciation with Syllabry

I happened to come across what I think is a very good video for practicing Japanese pronunciation. Japanese doesn’t have a lot of sounds, but some of the sounds it does have are difficult for English speakers. Luckily, the more you practice the better you will get. Even if you are advanced, getting back to [...]

November 17th, 2009 by Nick 

1000 Common Japanese Words for Anki or Mnemosyne

1000 Common Japanese Words for Anki or Mnemosyne

The most popular post on JapaneseWords.net has been 1000+ Japanese Words List. As the title suggests, the post contains a list of over 1000 common Japanese Words and Kanji. I am proud to announce that the list has just gotten much better. Thanks to the hard work of Michele Romanini and his wife Bika Fujioka, [...]

November 15th, 2009 by Nick 

NihongoUp

NihongoUp

I have mentioned several times that studying Japanese should be fun. If it’s not fun then it is going to be much harder and take you longer to learn. An ideal method would be one that makes you feel like you aren’t studying at all. Over the last few weeks I have been playing with [...]

November 4th, 2009 by Nick 

JapanesePod101

JapanesePod101

So far we have covered tools for memorizing Japanese words and phrases, learning and reading kana and kanji, and of a great dictionary. Today we are going to talk about a program I used to use quite a bit when I first started working in Tokyo, JapanesePod101. When I first started using JapanesePod101 is was [...]

October 14th, 2009 by Nick 

Read the Kanji

Read the Kanji

The last two tools I have written about (Remembering the Kanji and Reviewing the Kanji) have all been about learning the kanji. When learning kanji it’s important to not lose focus of why we are studying in the first place, “to read Japanese”. And it just so happens, that this next tool is a cool [...]

October 8th, 2009 by Nick 

Reviewing the Kanji

Reviewing the Kanji

Yesterday, we covered what I consider to be an essential set of books for learning the Japanese kana and kanji. By themselves, Remembering the Kana and Remembering the Kanji are great tools for learning Japanese. So great in fact,  someone has created an entire website to help you use them more efficiently. Besides being a [...]

October 7th, 2009 by Nick 

Remembering the Kanji

Remembering the Kanji

Next in the line of helpful Japanese tools are a set of books. Remembering the Kanji 1 & 2 and Remembering the Kana are extremely useful tools, and combined with Anki, will hep you learn the Japanese kana and kanji before you know it. The system used in these books to teach the Japanese characters [...]

October 6th, 2009 by Nick 
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