American Gaijin
-
Ignorance
I found a book at Half Price Books yesterday called “zakennayo”. It’s an introduction to slang in Japanese. It doesn’t paint a very flattering picture of early 90s Japanese teen culture, but maybe that’s just realistic. “Zakennayo” is an extremely rude word that means, essentially, “fuck off” in Japanese. It’s a word I’d actually rather…
-
Loan Words
Many words in Japanese are borrowed from other languages. Many from Chinese, and quite a few from English and Portuguese. A smattering from other languages as well. The interesting thing about Japanese, though, as opposed to many other languages, is that the Japanese language doesn’t have the syllabic structure to migrate the loanwords over untouched. …
-
America’s Darkness
A part of me feels like I’ve been a bit hard on Japan. I take back nothing, honestly. There is a darkness that runs through their society, and it is a little jarring when contrasted with the beauty of their culture. I am not comfortable with that, honestly. But then I thought about how my…
-
The Shallowness of Exported Japanese Culture
A recurring theme of this site is my continued wonder at why I’m bothering to learn Japanese at all. I mean, it is an interesting language, it’s difficult, it’s a challenge. All these things are true. But at the end of the day, as a gaikokujin, I find that my reasons for learning the language are…
-
Find the Good
Today I’m going to write about something that’s on my mind that is not about Japanese at all. I suppose it could be tangentially, but let’s just say it’s not. Like many in my country, I’ve been inundated lately with bad news. I don’t mean bad news in the sense that it’s bad from a…
-
Japan’s Checkered Past
Many years ago, I was taking piano lessons as a late teen. My teacher was an older Filipino woman who was a child (or a teenager, perhaps) during the Japanese occupation of the Phillipines. She hated the Japanese. Or at least she struggled to not hate the Japanese. She told me horrible stories, and honestly…
-
Visitors
Every now and then I check my site stats to see who’s visiting what and where they come from. In something that is perhaps not a surprise and is totally expected given the crap quality of what I create here, there are not many visitors, though there seem to be a little more lately. Perhaps…
-
Gaijin
I don’t have any tattoos. In fact, I think tattoos are ugly and I would never intentionally get one. Why one would intentionally blemish their skin like that is beyond me. (and if you disagree, then go ahead, but this is my opinion and I’m sticking to it). I haven’t put a lot of thought…