Well, it is the new year in Japan anyway. 
 
 Here is our 年賀状 with our address blacked out.  I know everyone who reads this is a good guy, but what about that person reading over your shoulder?!  
 
 It is now Heisei 19. (Just in case you lost count)
 
Here is a bit about the Japanese New Year 

It's official.  The White (male) Group wins!
 
If you have never lived in Japan during the New Year, you may not know what Kouhaku is.  As the name implies it is a kind of singing contest between the 'red group' and the 'white group.'  Women performers make up the 赤組 (red) and male performers make up [...]

親バカ 

I first heard this phrase at a middle school in Japan.  The students entering a school play pointed at their respective parents sitting in the stands and said to me, 「親バカ」.  Naturally I was a little appalled at hearing school children call their parents fools.  I mean, these were THE good kids.  Seeing the horror [...]

We bought a DVD player for our minivan so that Makoto could be entertained instead of crying.  For the most part he did well without it, but there were moments on the eight hour trip that called for it.  
Here is what I learned: 
    Baby Einstein - Overpriced    Wiggles - Awesome            The [...]

I have been saying I'd do it for years and one day I paid my sister to do the work for me! Well, I did have some prep work. Anyway, if you are studying for 3 kyuu in '07, sign up to receive an email a day with all the information on that kanji from [...]

I just started reading Musashi by Eiiji Yoshikawa (in English). It is definitely a page turner.  I'm only about 100 pages down the road, but I will do a full review when I am finished.  
  A director named Hiroshi Inagaki did a trilogy of movies based on this book staring the one and only [...]

Here is our Technorati Profile!

A friend brought over a DVD last night.  It was the most amazing heart-warming story.  Evidentially, a middle school teacher in a small town in Tennessee did a lesson on the dangers of intolerance and indifference that led to the Holocaust.  A student ask just how many people make up 6 million?  It's hard enough [...]

Considering I couldn't think of anything better to talk about to wrap up this week, I thought I'd talk about 尻取り. 
尻取り, shiritori, is a word-chain game where you say a word beginning with the last kana of the last word shouted.
 There is a children's show いないいない～ばっ！ (peek-a-boo!) that did a video to a shiritori [...]

I received a correction by email on the 十 kanji page on TJP.com.  We had had the following example sentence:
 私は十歳です。watashi wa juusai desu.I am 10 years old.

 They correctly corrected me by saying it should be jissai instead of juusai.
I knew radio and tv announcers say 「じっさい」 but I wasn't aware 「じゅうさい」 was incorrect.  Turns out there [...]