Welcome to the second ediition in a series I am calling “practical Japanese” where I share a photo or video showing hiragana, katakana or kanji being used in a practical everyday sense. The aim is to expand the vocabulary of fellow Japanese learners so they may get familiar with seeing and...

Practical Japanese is a new series I am starting where from time to time I will publish a photo and/or video displaying Japanese characters whether Kanji, Katakana, Hiranga or a combination of them. I hope that seeing Japanese being used is a practical everyday sense will help expand the vocabulary of...

I’ve been meaning to share an interesting web series I discovered a while back via Twitter I think. A web drama featuring a Japanese family obsessed with Gundam anime figures or “Gunpla.” This web series was created and aired in Japan while Gundam OO was on hence there is a lot of reference...

Erin’s Challenge is a website that offers free high quality and interactive Japanese lessons and is one of the highest quality websites to help with learning Japanese I have found. The focus of the website is Erin; an exchange student who arrives from her home country into a Japanese high school...

Since acquiring an Android powered phone, one of the first kinds of applications I have been downloading and checking out are those related to studying Japanese in the hopes that the effects of my procrastination can be soothed . The Android Market has a lot of these kinds of apps – some are excellent,...

I have been studying Japanese on and off far too long to not be good at it and while I have sought to blame my delinquency on the lack of opportunities to practice, my inability to remain motivated, a ‘busy’ lifestyle and procrastination there are a few simple words and phrases that have...

Simple easy to play games are often used to teach languages. I recently discovered an interesting flash game called Kana Invaders that puts an genius twists on the popular Space Invaders game. Instead and shooting invading aliens you can shoot invading hiragana and katakana! Very good for bad students...

My quest to rediscover my reading mojo has been proving quite successful, the last Japan related book I read through was Japan: An Illustrated History and a few school and non Japan related books later I decided to get two more books, they are Crazy for Kanji: A Student’s Guide to the Wonderful...

What do you do when you are a designer and have to make frequent trips to Japan but you are unable to find the time to learn to read or speak the language? Why design a katakana typeface that has English phonetic sounds embedded of course! Thats exactly what Michael Johnson and his team at Johnson Banks...

My study of the Japanese language is a stop and go process but I have been making a lot of progress lately. On the reading side so far I am confident of my Hiragana and Katakana knowledge and have been practicing recognizing more and more Kanji starting with the first year elementary school ones off...