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ttog

Recently I was scouted as a one-day assistant on master’s thesis defence at my university. My job was to guide the master students in and out of the classrooms where their evaluators were waiting for them. Like Vergilius who guided Dante Alighieri through his Divine Comedy. Most of the graduate students in my faculty are foreign students. I took the liberty of talking to them and discussing their dissertations and their career plans. The scientific fields are chosen based on the applicability of their results My argument is solely based on my personal observations, but it seems that there is a trend for choosing a scientific field when it comes […]

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ttog

New Year is a fur tree, a count down, presents and all-nighter all over the world. But not in Japan. In Japan New Year is celebrated in an extremely modest way, comparing to Japanese Christmas or New Year celebrations in every country. Here is a list what a foreigner can (or should) do to celebrate New Year Japanese-style. 1. Nengajo (New Year post cards) It stands for Japanese New Year post cards. Post cards are a inevitable part of Japanese culture, but New Year post cards or 年賀状 (nengajo) are a special aspect of Japanese post card culture. The Japanese have been sending post cards to each other since Showa […]

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yushima_kawaiimono

More and more English translations have appeared in the present-day Japan . These translations make my life a lot easier. But there is one thing bothering me. As a foreigner in Japan you can’t help notice that an English translation is sometimes longer than the Japanese phrase. I’ll give you an example. Here is an instruction for worshiping one Japanese god in the temple. View this post on Instagram See, the Japanese phrase is longer for some reason and an English phrase is very short. #mylifeinjapan #japanese #languagelearning #translation #instablogger #gaijinworld Annaさん(@thetalesofagaijin)がシェアした投稿 – 2018年12月月21日午前4時00分PST See what I mean? The Japanese phrase is longer for some reason which makes you doubt […]

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ttog

When you speak Japanese with your Japanese friends you can’t avoid this question: “What Japanese do you like most?” or as they say it どんな日本語が一番好きですか I am always at a loss. What do they want me to say? There are different dialects in Japanese language, there are different idioms, different characters, onomatopoeia, polite speech, not very polite speech – it all qualifies as Japanese. So how exactly should I answer this tricky question? I’ve asked my Japanese friends and here is what I found out.  How do I answer the question “what Japanese do you like the most”? a word or phrase with the a pleasant meaning some Japanese cute […]