khatzumoto

Help A Reader Out

A reader named X-star sent me an email today. Here it is, slightly abridged, and with sections added to ease referencing. Hey. I found your site very motivating, but slightly confusing at times. I’ve dabbled in a bit of Japanese, learned the kana/a very small amount of kanji, picked up words here and there, textbooks…

Technical Issues Resolved

So, um…Today, there seemed to have been a little problem with this site. You may have seen an “Internal Server Error”. That issue has now been resolved. I’m not sure what it was exactly, but it may have been my fault (theory # 1: a database query gone wild; theory #2: an act of war…

Time Management: Too Much Japanese?

No such thing. I think. I don’t think there is such a thing as doing “too much Japanese”. A language isn’t just a hobby, it isn’t just something to kill time, it’s a life skill. LIFE skill. That’s English for “important”. There aren’t many things in life that it’s nearly impossible to function without socially,…

If You Remember Nothing Else…

Remember this. A language is not actually a skill. It’s not something you can take and “have”. We talk about “acquiring” it, which implies possession, but in fact it cannot be possessed as such. A language is a habit. It is a way of being. So if in doubt about just how to go about…

The Thrilling World of Legal Documents

[Update 2011/07/29@0129 JST: I humbly retract everything bad I said about CliffsNotes. CliffsNotes rule. There’s no way I was going to read Atlas Shrugged for real: YouTube doesn’t watch itself; get to the point, woman! :P] Legal documents are a wordy morass of redundant crap… …in English. But in Japanese, they’re…fun. No, I mean it. Filled…