宮本 武蔵 Miyamoto Musashi was perhaps Japan’s greatest samurai. Mifune Toshiro, the absolute coolest Japanese actor of all time*, played Musashi in a trilogy of movies called ‘Samurai’ in English.
One of my earliest posts here was announcing I had started to read Musashi by Eiiji Yoshikawa (in English). I forgot to mention [...]

In my last post I mentioned a word which means ‘to pretend one is not home when one really is.’ Here it is:
居留守
i rusu
It starts with 居. This is the kanji behind the famous 「いる」 which shows existence as in:
犬がいる。
inu ga iru.
There is a dog.
You may happily go about your existence never knowing [...]

Today I got my 300th subscriber at Youtube. Whohoo!
Well, it’s nothing compared to geriatric1927’s 44,466 subscribers, but I guess it isn’t bad since I started just a few months ago.
I won’t make any more videos or audio stuffs until I finish moving TJP to the new server, but please subscribe!* I always enjoy [...]

It was quite an episode today. As you may know we’ve been following the new Korean Drama on NHK (through TV Japan on satellite) called 春のワルツ haru no warutsu - Spring Waltz. (see NHK’s page)
First let me briefly go through the cast of characters.
ジェハ - the star. He is a famous piano [...]

Let’s take a look at using うるさい urusai to mean ‘fussy’ or ‘choosy.’
うるさい’s usage isn’t limited to ‘loud’ as in the level of volume only, but it is also used to mean ’shut up!’ and as today’s post shows, ‘to be fussy about something.’
Notice the pattern is usually:
(what is being fussed about) + に + [...]

Yumi bought a book by Supernanny Jo Frost called Supernanny by Jo Frost. Thumbing through it reminded me of a discussion in an English class I had at the university. The topic was about what gender should be used for the third-person singular pronoun when the gender of the people involved is unknown [...]

I got this from Atsuko Irisa today. I don’t know much about their organization, but it may be something someone reading this may be interested in:
Hashi.org Offers $1000 Scholarship for Study in South Korea or Japan
(DEADLINE: August 15, 2007)
Contact: Atsuko Irisa, Hashi.org, (415) 335-7386 info @ hashi.org. Hashi.org
223 River Street, Suite B Santa [...]

We’ve been slammed for the past few days. I blinked and here we are already halfway through this week.
Log on to www….
I heard this on the radio the other day and it got me thinking. Do we really log on to websites? In the olden days with dialup BBSes, you would “log [...]

This morning, A friend and I had a conversation about another friend who is currently looking for a job in the area. I mentioned we may need to hire someone for packing and postage labeling, but knowing our friend was looking for a job in the tech sector, I said, “…but with his experience [...]

Just a few common sayings that are oddly wrong - if you think about it.
Oddly Wrong: You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Correct: You can’t eat your cake and have it too.
Many people say “You can’t have your cake and eat it too” but why not? I mean, you CAN have your [...]