A language is just an information stream. And information doesn’t even care what species you are (Alex the parrot spoke and understood real English; many non-human primates know sign language; many housepets understand basic speech), let alone your precious backstory. Information. Nothing is more neutral. Nothing is cheaper. Nothing gives you more bang for less…

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Honshitsu (本質). The thing itself. True nature. From very early in life, we are surrounded by B.S. The trick is not to rid the world of B.S., but to train our eyes to see through it. It’s a bit of challenge to do, because the honshitsu is opaque to most people (and kept that way…

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Japanese belongs to you. It always belonged to you. All human knowledge belongs to you. And just like you have to pay the storage company to get access to your stuff, you — everybody — has to earn their Japanese through repeated exposure. And just like property taxes, even after you own Japanese “free and…

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If only. If only you’d started three years ago. If you’d learned just 5 kanji a day starting three years ago, you’d know 5000 kanji by now. You know what, though? That’s not your problem. What you did(n’t do) three years ago is not what’s wrong with you. What you’re doing right now is what’s…

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If you tell yourself it’s easy, you’ll find (a way to make) it easy. If you tell yourself otherwise, that’s also what you’re likely to get. As motivational speaker Les Brown is fond of saying: “Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be established unto thee”. Self-fulfilling prophecy. It is what you say…

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“Un héros, c’est celui qui fait ce qu’il peut. Les autres ne le font pas.” Romain Rolland Don’t do what you should do, do what you can do. You’ll be eternally shocked and consistently surprised by how much more success doing the latter will bring you than doing the former. Most ironically of all, doing…

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