You finally are reading a Japanese book or manga. But surprise surprise, you don’t understand a lot of the vocabulary. This places you in a difficult situation. Do you ignore what you don’t understand and just try to enjoy the story? Or do you look up some or all of the words you don’t understand in an effort to increase your comprehension and value out … Continue reading →

You want to dive into manga as soon as possible. It’s the next logical step after learning the basics, and it is a great place to enter reading real Japanese material. Where do you start?  No matter where you go, you can’t escape the recommendation to try out Yotsuba. The reasons are always the same: it is simply written, easy to understand, has normal daily … Continue reading →

Japanese writing can seem overwhelming at times. You are dealing with 3 writing systems, one of which has detailed intricacies that seem beyond what the human eye was meant to absorb. But you deal with it. Over 125 million people deal with it daily. You start off with words and sentences. They are simple and grow more complex. But Japanese learner life isn’t linear. You … Continue reading →

You reading Japanese? Great. You want to read faster? Of course you do. Who doesn’t want to gain more enjoyment and knowledge for less time required. Learning to read fast requires the same technique in all languages, but sometimes we have these techniques so ingrained into our native language, we forget how we learned to read at a faster pace. Well I’m here to remind … Continue reading →