Book Release: “Unarranged: A musical memoir about influences and improvisation”
I’m prod to the announce my latest book, “Unarranged: A musical memoir about influences and improvisation”, now available for purchase.
Netflix review: One Piece (live action) Season 2
The first season of One Piece’s live action adaptation was released on Netflix in 2023, and it was by far one of the best adaptations in many respects: story, characters, music, even acting. Of course it was built on a popular manga and anime series, but with hundreds of episodes of that, it must be… Read More »
Japanese Literature Review: “Silent Singer” （サイレントシンガー）by Yoko Ogawa （小川洋子 ）
This is my review of the novel “Silent Singer”, written by renowed Japanese author Yoko Ogawa. I’ve also included a short translation of one part of the book.
Japan-related Movie Review: “Rental Family”
Rental Family is a movie released in 2025 that stars Brendan Frasier as a man living in Japan with an interesting occupation: playing a role as a fake family member for various clientelle. The premise sounded interesting and a friend recommended the movie (not to mention it got a bunch of good reviews) so I… Read More »
Can you raise a child to be truly bilingual? (A case study)
Besides having an interest in the details of Japanese itself (grammar, vocab, culture, etc.), I frequently think about effective ways to learn those aspects of Japanese. That includes not just for individuals studying the language as a hobby, but for those trying to raise one or more children as biligual, or at least reasonably fluent,… Read More »
Ki Aikido Discussions: Understanding unconscious tension
I train and sometimes help teach a style of Aikido––a Japanese martial art––called Ki-Aikido (more formally “Shinshin Touitsu Aikido” 心身統一合氣道) that has a strong emphasis on applying lessons learned on the mat in real life. If you want to get a summary about this style of martial art before going through this article, check out… Read More »
Why you probably don’t want to learn to speed read in Japanese (or any language)
Having been an avid reader since I was young, my reading speed in English seems to be relatively fast. Not to the extreme extent to break any record, but I was generally able to read a novel of average length––say around 300 pages––in a handful of days (and in one case in a single day).… Read More »
Anime movie review: “Cosmic Princess Kaguya!”
When I first heard of the movie “Cosmic Princess Kaguya!” (超かぐや姫！) I thought it was going to be some stuffy story based on the classic Japanese work “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter” about a special girl found inside of a bamboo stalk. But then someone suggested it to me, saying it was a bit… Read More »
Japanese literary expression: それでいて [sore de ite]
In Japanese, there tends to be a large gap between spoken and written language, especially when considering formal writing like that found in literature (novels, etc.). For most students, learning spoken Japanese is generally one of the most important goals, however in order to enjoy Japan’s rich world of literature you often have to learn… Read More »
Japanese useful expression pair: 手に入れる [te ni ireru] and 手に入る [te ni hairu]
Even though learning basic vocabulary and grammar rules is important, expressions whose meaning has become more than the sum of their parts––what are commonly called idoms––can be seen as one of the central parts of any language. In this post, I want to go over two important interrelated common expressions in Japanese that are built… Read More »