If you read JapanNewbie you already know, but I recently went to a talk with Jay Rubin, translator of Murakami Haruki works as well as author of “Making Sense of Japanese“.
Check out the original post if you haven’t already!
- Harvey

Andreas asked for a deeper explanation of 「ように」and 「ために」so I hit the books, and came up with this geeky explanation. let me know if you have any questions after this!
The difference between 「ように」 and 「ために」 can be a little tricky to get the hang of. In English, they both tend to translate into things […]

In the NTT Can herupu yuu I invited readers to ask if they wanted to know the nitty-gritty details regarding the difference in Japanese「ば」or「たら」。Well, someone did, so here we go.
For a quick review, both 「ば」and 「たら」can have the meaning of “if” when used in the manner below.
A:「彼女に聞いたら教えてもらえるよ。」
B:「彼女に聞けば教えてもらえるよ。」
Both of these sentences can be roughly translated to […]

The secret identity of Miyamoto from the previous entry has been brought to my attention!
I don’t speak Spanish, but it seems that…
Miyamoto is a soccer player, also known as Batman?
In other news, Japanese Ads was recently linked by Pixel y Dixel, a popular Spanish tech blog. Thus, there are many Spanish speakers stopping by the […]