Calling people in Japan by their titles, not names
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| Continuing the theme of social standing, another interesting facet of Japanese society is how people are called only by their title even when away from work or even after…
Benefits of Direct Translation Between Japanese and English
| It’s very hard to understand Japanese in the beginning because the structure of sentences is so completely different from English. So, unlike learning French, Spanish, or other languages with…
What the heck does ‘Pacman’ mean, anyway?
| Just a short post today, but a golden piece of trivia: Did you know that the name Pacman comes from Japanese? In Japanese the 擬音語 (giongo, onomatopoeia) パクパク (paku…
Social standing and language in Japan
| In Japan, it’s very important to know a person’s social standing, as it affects the language you use when you talk to that person. This is why Japanese people…
Why do I need to memorize hiragana and katakana before I start my study with you?
| We received the above good question by email the other day, that we thought we should probably explain better, so we’ll be adding this information to our FAQ shortly,…
多少 vs. More or Less
| On the surface, the English phrase “more or less“ looks like it should be the equivalent of the Japanese word 多少 (“tashou“, made up of the kanji for “many“…
Massive Typhoon Sweeps Fukuoka – GenkiJACS Undamaged but Exhilarated
| This weekend saw one of the biggest typhoons in recent years pass directly over Fukuoka, and it is currently sweeping up the rest of Western Japan. There have been…
Memorizing Japanese vocabulary
| The latest version of the 日本国語大辞典 (Nihon Kokugo Daijiten, Shogakukan’s Japanese Dictionary, and the largest of all the Japanese-Japanese dictionaries) has over 500,000 words listed. How are students of…
New Photos Uploaded!
| The end of the summer rush has given us time to finally catch up with some of the work we’ve been putting off for months, and first on our…
Epayments take off in Japan
| Virtually all of the new cell phones in Japan these days have some kind of electronic wallet function built into them. These ewallets allow you to charge your phone…