Shopping Boogie by Kasagi Shizuko
Posted by harvey in About, Culture, Media, Music, Osaka on 02. May, 2009 | 5 Comments
I want to introduce you to Shizuko Kasagi (1914 – 1985) and this great song called Kaimono Bugi (買い物ブギ, “Shopping Boogie”), recorded in 1950, way back during the post-war American Occupation of Japan. Shizuko Kasagi was known as the “Queen of Boogie” 「ブギの女王」 in postwar Japan. She was born in Kanagawa but moved to Osaka [...]
Lightning, The Wife of the Rice Plant
Posted by harvey in Culture, Language on 16. Apr, 2009 | 18 Comments
In Japanese kaminari 雷 is “thunder”, and inazuma 稲妻 is “lightning”. For a long while I think I was referring to both of them as kaminari… Anyway, I recently realized that inazuma is in fact the correct way to refer to lightning. Then, like any good language geek, I checked it out in my dictionary. [...]
Quickie: JapanShop Sale till Friday Morning (EST)
Posted by harvey in Language on 16. Apr, 2009 | Comments Off
Quickie sale alert for your Japanese-studying needs. The Japan Shop is having a 10% off sale on everything in the store until Friday morning (EST). That includes this nice collection of their popular $5 downloads on CD, which is on sale for $24.95 (retail $29.95). Take an additional 10% off that and get 12 of [...]
Getting Emotional with the Kanji
Posted by harvey in Culture, Language on 03. Apr, 2009 | Comments Off
喜怒哀楽 (kidoairaku) This Japanese four-character phrase (四字熟語) roughly means, “the range of human emotions.” Individually the characters mean… 喜 – happiness 怒 – anger 哀 – sorrow/pity (Love this kanji, it’s used in 哀れ. Very Japanese.) 楽 – pleasure Together, these characters express the entire range of feelings that a person might have. I can’t [...]
You know you’ve been in America too long when… From a Japanese Perspective
Posted by harvey in Culture, Humor, Language, Society on 29. Mar, 2009 | 34 Comments
You know those, “You know you’ve been in [place] for too long when…” jokes? Kayo from Osaka Life found some “You know you’ve been in America for too long when…” jokes written by Japanese people. These jokes are an excellent insight into the cultural differences between the United States and Japan. If you don’t understand [...]
Read The Kanji – a JLPT Kanji study app
Posted by harvey in Gadgets, Language on 28. Mar, 2009 | 8 Comments
I just found out about Read The Kanji this morning. Guess how I found out about it? Via Twitter! Twitter is awesome, I’m telling you… But, this post is about Read The Kanji (which is also awesome), not Twitter. Learn JLPT 1 Kanji, or Start With Hiragana In Read The Kanji you select what you [...]
Download 101 Common Japanese Idioms
Posted by harvey in Gadgets, Language, Media on 22. Mar, 2009 | Comments Off
The Japan Shop is offering a 52 mb download that includes text and audio explanations of 101 Common Japanese Idioms for the ridiculously low price of $2.50. This download will be $2.50 for a limited time only, after which the price will be $5.00. As always with The Japan Shop downloads, you get your data [...]
Maborosi
Posted by harvey in Media, Movies on 20. Mar, 2009 | 7 Comments
I have been watching a lot of Japanese movies recently because my university library happens to be huge. I recently watched this movie: Maborosi (幻の光 in Japanese). As I said, I have seen a lot of Japanese films, and I enjoy most of them. However, Maborosi was really, really, slow. It’s beautiful… but slow. The [...]
