Welcome to JapanNewbie.com! My goal is to get you excited about Japan and the Japanese language.
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Posted by harvey in Osaka, Tokyo on 15. Jan, 2012 @ 10:49 am | 2 Comments
I have a friend who is about to head to Japan for the first time, and he wants the Maid Cafe experience. I have been to maid cafe’s before, but not anytime in the past 5+ years or so… so I’m way out of the loop. This youtube introduction of Royal Milk is pretty good, [...]
Posted by harvey in Culture, Humor, Language on 27. Nov, 2011 @ 6:02 pm | 1 Comment
What do these people have in common? Michael Jackson, birthday: August 29, 1958 Bae Yong Joon (Yon-sama), birthday: August 29, 1972 John McCain, birthday: August 29, 1936 Charlie Parker, birthday: August 29, 1920 Right! Their birthdays are the same! But what about their birthdays is special and interesting to those of us studying Japanese language [...]
Posted by harvey in Books, Gadgets, Media on 03. Oct, 2011 @ 9:51 am | 3 Comments
In an effort to boost my pitiful Chinese abilities… I got an App! A company called Rye Studio makes a series of picture book apps for iPhone and iPad that read you a story while showing you the text in Chinese. Listening to target language text being read at native speed while reading along is [...]
Posted by harvey in Media, Music on 16. Sep, 2011 @ 10:39 pm | 2 Comments
This music recommendation must be the most personal one I have ever done… Here’s the story. So a long time ago in Japan I met a French dude. We became friends, time passed, I moved to Osaka and he was still in Tokyo, and we didn’t see each other so often anymore. Then a few [...]
Posted by harvey in Art, Music on 08. Sep, 2011 @ 4:54 pm | 3 Comments
If you’re into Japanese rock and… camera flashes… you’ll probably find this to be pretty interesting. This is the video for the song Bright Siren by a Japanese band called androp. They used 250 cameras to set this up. Pretty impressive in terms of scale! Fun stuff. If you check their official website you can [...]
Posted by harvey in Language, Media on 03. Sep, 2011 @ 4:16 pm | Comments Off
Time to learn some 90s Japanese slang!!! バッチグー!!! I can hardly even remember why I wanted to blog about this phrase… Ah yes, I do remember now. So I’m slowly working my way through Devil Survivor, a sweet strategy RPG for DS, and there is one character that says this phrase over and over again. [...]
Posted by harvey in Culture, Media, Music on 03. Aug, 2011 @ 6:00 pm | 1 Comment
A newish video from OMODAKA! I really like OMODAKA’s style. He mixes traditional Japanese folk music with his modern digital beats and the results are really fun. OMODAKA in action Check out some of the links below for more OMODAKA videos and information. Related Posts: New OMODAKA drops Tuesday! More OMODAKA Get OMODAKA Albums on [...]
Posted by harvey in Art, Culture, Language on 09. Jul, 2011 @ 4:08 pm | 3 Comments
Kaneko Misuzu One of my good friends told me to check out this poem by Kaneko Misuzu [wiki] quite some time ago, and I finally got around to it. The poem is short and sweet, and not too difficult, so you can use it as a study tool as well. I have provided a simple [...]