Japanese learning blog
Practical guides on speaking, grammar, pronunciation, listening, and study planning, written for learners who want to use Japanese in real life.
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Japanese at the Post Office: Parcels and Deliveries
A Japanese post office runs on a short set of questions, and the same questions come back every single time. Learn the answers once and the counter stops being the errand you keep putting off.
14 min readJapanese for a Mobile Phone Contract in Japan
Signing a phone contract in Japan is a long conversation with a script you cannot see. Learn about fifteen nouns and four questions and you stay in control of it from beginning to end.
14 min readJapanese Neighbourhood Life: Greetings and Rules
Most friction between a foreign resident and a Japanese neighbourhood is not rudeness. It is a handful of short sentences nobody taught you, and a rubbish timetable written in words you have never met.
12 min readHow to Make Appointments and Bookings in Japanese
Almost every booking in Japanese runs on the same four pieces of information and the same two or three counter-questions. Learn the pattern once and the restaurant, the clinic and the plumber all become the same conversation.
12 min readJapanese Stroke Order Rules and Why They Matter
Stroke order looks like a rule invented to make calligraphy teachers happy. It is actually a compression system: eight habits that let you write, search for, and decode thousands of characters you have never met.
11 min readJapanese Kanji Radicals: The Building Blocks Guide
Kanji stop looking like two thousand unrelated pictures the moment you see the parts they are assembled from. Radicals are the small set of pieces that carry meaning, and they are the fastest route into a character you have never met.
12 min readHow to Memorise Kanji with Mnemonics That Stick
Kanji stop looking like two thousand unrelated drawings the moment you see them as a small set of repeating parts, glued together by a story you can rebuild from scratch.
13 min readHow to Type Japanese on Your Phone and Computer
Typing Japanese looks like a settings problem and turns out to be a reading exercise: you type the sounds, and the machine asks you which kanji you meant.
13 min readHow to Look Up a Kanji You Cannot Read
Sooner or later a character appears with no reading attached and nothing around it to guess from. Knowing five routes into it, and which one suits the moment, turns a dead stop into a thirty-second detour.
14 min readJapanese Handwriting Practice for Adult Learners
You will type almost all the Japanese you produce, and you should still write some of it by hand. Fifteen minutes a week is enough if you spend them on shape and balance rather than on filling pages.
13 min readHiragana or Katakana: Which Script Goes Where
Japanese writing mixes three scripts in a single line, and each one is doing a different job. Once you can name that job, a mixed sentence stops looking like noise.
12 min readKatakana Loanwords and Wasei-Eigo Explained
Thousands of Japanese words came from English, yet they are the hardest words for English speakers to hear. The reshaping is systematic, and once you know the rules you can predict most of it.
12 min readPractical guides
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