Today’s Japanese listening comprehension is an excerpt where Murakami Haruki explains his first visit to Princeton University and the reason behind it. Hint: it is related to one of his favorite American author. As usual, I am reading first normal speed, and then again more slowly. Try to first listen without looking at the transcript below, […]
Tag: Japanese
Today’s listening comprehension is from the book “やがて哀しき外国語” (yagate kanashiki gaikokugo) by Murakami Haruki (村上春樹). It is an essay about his experience living in the US as an Associate Researcher and Associate Professor at Princeton University, in the 90’s. I am personally not a fan of Murakami’s novels, but I do like his essays very […]
🔹If you are interested in getting my latest linguistic gems, please consider becoming a premium subscriber here: https://www.patreon.com/join/yukikeiser Previously, we explored the perceptions of “inside and outside the home” in Japanese culture — and how it impacts the language. Today, I’d like to go over another example of the array of politeness within the language: […]
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🇯🇵 Japanese Precision: Animal Counters
In a previous post, I talked about the precision of Japanese language as seen through the myriad of classifiers (or counters) based on shape. Today, I’d like to go over some animal counters, since they differ according to both size and social ranking. There are primarily 3 counters for animals: – hiki (匹) = for […]
In my last post, we learned how Japanese language is precise, through the variety of animal counters. Today, let’s take a look at counters as they pertain to humans and demons! Humans are counted differently depending on whether they are alive or dead, influenced by the various rituals surrounding death involving the corpse. – nin (人) = for humans that are […]
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🇯🇵 Precision in the Japanese language
If you have traveled to Japan, you may have noticed the attention to details in this country: everything is done meticulously, with care. I would say precision is in our genes. When I was working in Japan as a sales and PR manager for the Italian shoe brand Giuseppe Zanotti, the Italian team was always […]
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🇯🇵 Japanese super cat day
🇺🇸 Did you know that today is “super cat day” in Japan? The number “two” in Japanese is “ni” and its sound is associated to cats because of its resemblance to the sound of meow in Japanese (にゃん nyan or にゃー nyaa), so every year February 22 is know as cats’ day. And this year, […]
Today I’d like to talk about a concept that is very important in Japanese culture, and that has a big influence on the language: “uchi” (内) and “soto” (外). They mean inside (the house) and outside, which is the society. Society (社会 – shakai) is very important to Japanese values. That’s why Japanese people often […]
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🇯🇵 ’80s J-Pop Gossip🎤
Although I’m not a huge fan of J-pop, I do really love Japanese ’80s music, so I thought I would start a Japanese ’80s gossip series here in light of its wonderful abundance! I’ve also made a playlist on Spotify, so if you are interested in it, check it here. When Japanese people think of Japanese ’80s […]
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🇯🇵 More words with “en” 縁
Last November, I posted an article about the word 縁 (en), a word dear to Japanese people’s connection to sensitivity and philosophy, and how it was used in daily conversations. (You can see it here.) Today, I would like to go over two expressions that are related to or use 縁 (en). 一期一会 Ichigo Ichie The Japanese […]