I managed to also finish another video project today. It is on the most common Japanese pronouns:

わたし watashi I, me
わたしの watashi no my
わたしたち watashi tachi we, us
わたしたちの watashi tachi no our
あなた anata you
あなたの anata no your (singular)
あなたたち anata tachi you (plural)
あなたたちの anata tachi no your (plural)
彼 kare he
彼の kare no his
彼女 [...]

Yesterday I called an airline to check on reserving airplane tickets for my parent’s-in-law to come to visit us here in the US. Yumi was on Skype talking to her mother and I was on the phone talking with a nice lady from the Airlines.
–An Interlude–
Normally we have a Secret Language that allows us [...]

Today’s Super Suiyoubi (it’s Wednesday!) is on a book called Authentic Japanese: Progressing from Intermediate to Advanced. As the subtitle suggests it is for Intermediate students of Japanese. Here is the video:

Someone one graciously recorded Basho’s 奥の細道 oku no hoso michi and it is being offered at Gutenberg as a free MP3 download.
At the store, we have this book which is a bilingual collection of Basho’s Narrow Road to Oku haiku poems. The artwork is simply awesome. We currently have it on sale for [...]

I found this article on one of those free articles sites. Instead of the usual fluff, it has pretty good advice. Here is the entire article reprinted with permission:

Mastering Japanese Kanji – 7 Guerilla Tactics
Author: Jed Jones
The adoption in around the 6th century CE of kanji by the Japanese from Chinese emissaries was [...]

About once a year we get volunteered to give a talk about Japan and Japanese. Today we went to a local elementary school.
I started with a quiz to see how much they knew and… to have a little fun:
1) About how many Islands make up Japan?
a) 1 b) 4 c) 400 d) [...]

Google just unrolled a new venue for their ads – through YouTube Video. I’ve read a few negative reviews. First it is only good for US sites with English content. I happen to qualify, but of course that leaves out quite a few bloggers. Second, you can’t control what videos it shows. [...]

Ok, I don’t have an official list, but these three proverbs tend to be the first new learners learn. I like pushing ことわざ kotowaza proverbs and other famous sayings because you essentially kill two birds with one stone – 1) you can learn new vocabulary and 2) learn a bit of cultural Japanese.
Speaking of [...]

I want to begin a small collection of (hopefully) useful downloads for beginners of Japanese. We’ll begin with a list of all Japanese Language Proficiency Test 4 kyuu kanji* (the easiest and first set of kanji) with a single English meaning. It doesn’t have the pronunciations, but it may be helpful to print [...]

I get emails every day about how to learn Japanese. Usually they are very specific – “I’m a beginner wanting to focus on conversational Japanese. Which textbook would you recommend?” or “Do you know of any CDs or DVDs for beginners to practice listening comprehension?”. These are excellent questions and I usually [...]