Moving Temples
Posted by harvey in Culture, Language on 24. Nov, 2008 | 3 Comments
In Japanese, your temples (the ones on the side of your head, not the religious ones) are called こめかみ (komekami). Before you jump off to another blog… wait… This is actually pretty interesting. The kanji for こめかみ, which is hardly ever used anymore, is 米噛み. This is the kanji for “rice” 米 and the kanji [...]
Hoshi Shinichi – Short Shorts
Posted by harvey in Books, Language on 13. Nov, 2008 | 3 Comments
Shinichi Hoshi (星新一) was a Japanese author from Tokyo who lived from 1926 to 1997. He is famous for writing extremely short (4 or 5 pages) science fiction short stories for adults. Many of them have a dark twist to them at the end. I was introduced three of his stories in the Japanese class [...]
Are You a Sauce Face or Soy Sauce Face?
Posted by harvey in Culture, Language on 06. Nov, 2008 | 1 Comment
Language and culture time on JapanNewbie! Are you a Sauce Face or a Soy Sauce Face? In Japanese the expressions 醤油顔 (shouyuu gao) “soy sauce face”, and ソース顔 (sousu gao) “sauce face” are used to describe two different types of faces. First of all, “sauce” is not just any sauce, it’s the Japanese sauce that [...]
Image-based Japanese Flashcards for your iPod
Posted by harvey in Gadgets, Language on 02. Nov, 2008 | No Comments
The JLPT is less than 40 days away now, are those of you who are planning to take it ready? If you need a bit more help cramming vocabulary and kanji, PlaySay might have a solution for you. Image-Based Flashcard Examples for ANY JPEG capable device are now available. Here are the JLPT 1 images [...]
