In a previous post What are Japanese houses like? we saw the entrance hall and the kitchen. Today we will see more sections of the house. Bathroom The bathroom tends to be quite different from a western bathroom. This is mostly, because they have the bathing area separated from the toilet area.  Sometimes the bathing [...]

We’ve already seen the introduction to Japanese Adjectives, so now we’ll discuss what happens with these adjectives when using a respectful form (desu). Adjectives –i and -na Furui kuruma =bad car. takai kuruma=expensive care. Hansamuna kanojo= beautiful woman.

Hikikomori are adolescents who cannot cope with the frantic world that we are subjected to nowadays. The Japanese must show their family that they can be proud of them. Some adolescents see that they cannot live up to these expectations and when realizing that their study or work goals cannot be achieved, they give up. [...]

Ok, so we’ve learned to write Japanese with Windows 7 and as it turns out, we’ve also come across some hiragana that were giving us problems. Typical, right? Well, it’s time to solve these problems which can be done very easily. If we want to write hiragana in small, we only need to apply the [...]

This morning, I’ve seen the word inai and as I went searching for its meaning, I felt that it deserves its own post. Inai can be translated as “without existence”. We already know that the exact translation for “without”, is hard to find as it usually depends on the context. Inai,inai ba is a game [...]

A few days ago, we were discussing a phrase coming from a Japanese tale which I will try to translate little by little, so I can achieve some reading and translation abilities. To easily remember the text and make a smoother translation, I will write the phrase down in Japanese and romaji. いっすんぼうし むかし　むかし　こどもが　いない　おじいさんと　おばあさんが　かみさまに　おねがいを　すると　こゆびくらいの　おとこのこが　うまれました。

Well, before this question can be answered, we should warn you that this all depends whether it is a traditional/modern house and on the location. Just as there are many different houses in the western countries, there is also a lot of variety to be found between a big city and a small town. In [...]