Category Archives: Language

Language Studies: Keep It Simple, Stupid

Recently I was inspired by this website, which shows how to learn Welsh language. Welsh is a language I don’t know anything about, but the page’s offer provided very simple solutions to learn the language. The first one that struck … Continue reading

Posted in Japanese, JLPT, Korean, Language | 2 Comments

Practicing your Japanese and Korean handwriting

I spend a lot of time lately trying to improve my writing skills in both Korean and Japanese. My wife, who has had considerable training in Japanese calligraphy, gave me some good advice a while back, and said that even … Continue reading

Posted in Japanese, Korean, Language | 1 Comment

More Good Advice for Studying

Here’s more advice from Xunzi, which is a follow-up to my last post. I was surprised to see how popular that one was. Anyhow, this is from section 2: A thoroughbred can travel a thousand li in one day, yet … Continue reading

Posted in Confucius, Japanese, Korean, Language, Religion | 2 Comments

Japanese and Korean, A Second-Pass Comparison: Verbs

This post is dedicated to reader “Jan”, who expressed an interest in both languages. I’ve wanted to write this for a while, but waited until I had more information. Anyway, a while back, I posted a kind of first-pass comparison … Continue reading

Posted in Japanese, Korean, Language | 2 Comments

KPop Saturdays: Shinee’s “Sherlock”

This is another post in my sporadic KPop Saturday posts (haven’t actually done one in months).1 For this Saturday I wanted to post this one by SHINee from their live performance on KBS Music Bank: SHINee’s song “Sherlock” has been … Continue reading

Posted in Korean, KPop, Language, Music | Leave a comment

Good Advice for Study

After finishing the book on Han Feizi, I started reading the book written by the famous Confucian scholar Xunzi (荀子, 312–230 BC), particularly the Burton Watson translation. Xunzi is pronounced like “shoon-tsih” by the way.1 Like all Confucian scholars, he … Continue reading

Posted in Confucius, Japanese, Korean, Language, Literature | 4 Comments

Discouraged in my Korean Studies

Hey all, Need some advice. Lately, I’ve been pretty discouraged while studying Korean language. I started a kind of intensive 4-month project, and overall I’ve been pretty disciplined about it (better than I expected ), but I’m frustrated with my … Continue reading

Posted in Japanese, Korean, Language | 15 Comments

My First Interview

Hi all, I’ve been honored to have been interviewed by a reader recently on this blog. The interview is here. I don’t have a lot of juicy, interesting things to talk about, no secret children, no wild parties, or anything … Continue reading

Posted in Buddhism, Japanese, JLPT, Korean, KPop, Language, Music, Religion | Leave a comment

Korean Ramen Party, part one

As readers know, I have been studying Korean intensively in recent weeks, and I used TTMIK quite a bit. The Korean lessons they provide are entirely free, but if people want to support their work they offer a nice Korean-products … Continue reading

Posted in Cooking, Korean | Tagged | 8 Comments

Big Bang and 2NE1 on Japanese TV

Credit goes to my wife for finding these, but we like to watch Japanese TV on the Internet, and she knows a lot of TV shows I don’t. One show is called しゃべくり007 (shabekuri 007), which is a variety show … Continue reading

Posted in Japanese, KPop, Language, Music | Tagged , | Leave a comment