Monthly Archives: September 2015

(Foreign) Language fluency at work

Although I’m gradually getting the hang of day-to-day Japanese conversation, I don’t any experience using that language in a work environment. My current workplace doesn’t have many Japanese people, so there isn’t much opportunity to attempt it, either.

However, that doesn’t stop me from thinking about what it would be like to attempt using Japanese while working with a team of people at a job. I happen to work with people from many different cultures and sometimes I try to imagine what if I was them, using a foreign language at the workplace.

One major difference of using a foreign language at work compared to among friends is that you have much more pressure to communicate effectively, with your boss being less forgiving of mistakes and risks associated with not meeting expectations.

But more than that, this got me thinking to what it really means to be fluent in a language while at work. In addition to basic conversation skills, you may have to learn a bunch of technical or domain terms. There’s also a good chance you’ll have to give presentations as well as read and write many emails. In Japanese, you also have to have to worry about the various politeness levels, adjusting your speech and writing depending on the audience.

There is a big difference between being able to do everyday work things, and being able to do them close to native-level. For example, your reading speed may severely limit how fast you get work done, and time looking up words will delay things even further. In conversations, having to explain things a roundabout way due to insufficient ability to express yourself efficiently will also take more time, and potentially frustrate the listener who is looking to get back to work.

There is also the social angle. When I work with someone, the more fluent they are in English generally the easier it is to get along with them. For the cases where a coworker has a strong accent or makes common grammar mistakes, it will take a little more effort for me to follow their conversation, and there will be a higher chance of miscommunication. The more fluent someone is, the more opportunities they will have to make a joke or interject a friendly “unnecessary” comment which helps people to work together easier. At my current level of Japanese, I could probably communicate much of what I wanted to say, but only with great concentration and effort. I wouldn’t have the time (or as they say in Japanese, yoyuu) to even think about making jokes. Of course, there are some people who are fluent (either natives or non-natives) and just don’t make jokes because it isn’t their personality.

Fluency at work, besides having an impact on your efficiency accomplishing assigned tasks, also influences what jobs are open to you, or which you would be good at. In companies I’ve worked in, almost everyone at the management level had pretty good communication skills in English. And the higher you get, the more necessity there is for fluency. Even for jobs like software design architect which are very technical, you are required to efficiently listen to people’s opinions, device an appropriate architecture, and then communicate that verbally and via written documentation. Without the ability to quickly comprehend and respond in an intelligent fashion, you can’t get your job done. Even in one’s native language effective communication can be a challenge, and for a foreign language it’s that much harder.

Working with people also trains your people skills, like is learning what drives each individual and how to most effectively communicate with them. There is some of this in personal relationships, but the difference here is you generally cannot choose who you work with, so there is a bigger chance of having to deal with personality conflicts.

This highlights one of the great things about learning a foreign language – the opportunity to put a microscope on all those things you were taking advantage of in your native language. The more you uncover about what you were unconsciously doing all along, the more this thing called language amazes you.


How I learned to read in Japanese, and retain Kanji
























さ is something that took me quite some time to understand, partially because it wasn’t emphasized in any of the textbooks I originally learned Japanese from. I understand authors deciding to avoid this word because it not used very frequently in polite language, though you may hear it pretty often in informal situations.  Another reason it was difficult for me was because there isn’t any exact equivalent in English.

Let’s start from a simple example:

  • 俺は男だから
  • Because I’m a man!

The general feeling I get from さ is something I would describe as rough and informal, even a bit masculine, though some women do use this word. This example sentence contains several elements in addition to さ which have a connotation of masculine (俺, ore) or informal (だから, since it is not a polite form).

There is really no way to directly translate the さ here, but because of the sentence’s content I think the simple English translation above is sufficient to convey the informality and manly-ness. There are also some who say the particle さ can have an implicit feeling of refutation or rebuttal（反駁).

さ can be used after a verb directly, or after the word “の” (no).

  • 僕は王様になるの
  • (someday) I’ll be king!

My intuitive feel for a sentence like this is the さ is attributing a sense of toughness, or trying to brag about something. I think it would be more correct to say it adds a feeling of assertion.

さ can also be used in the middle of a sentence, sometimes multiple times. The below example uses さ once within the sentence and once at the end.

  • 、思ったんだけど。。。
  • So I was thinking… (literally: “I thought”)

In this usage, there is always a pause after the “さ” in the middle of a sentence, hence the comma. Here, it is said to help the speaker adjust his or her tone (語調を整える) as well as to indicate there is more to be said after. I also get the feeling the speaker is a male speaking informally, somewhere between a teenager and middle age, though there are definitely people outside of this age group that use the expression.

Again, it is hard to literally translate さ’s usage here into English, though I think we have some expressions such “you know”,  “you see”, and “right” which can be injected into informal sentences and share some of the nuances of さ。(ex: “So, there was this guy, right….and he starting running…”)

The particle ね (ne) can be used to a similar fashion to さ, however I feel it has a much less strong, more friendly tone (possibly feminine depending on the situation). (i.e. “僕、負けたんだ”)

さ can also be placed at the beginning of a sentence, where it is used to invite or urge a person to do something. You often see it used like this:

  • さ、始めよう！
  • Alright, lets get started!

I think the “Alright” here captures the tone pretty well, and could be replaced by “ok” as well.

For this usage, you can extend the “a” sound to “saa” (さあ or さ〜). Another common phrase is “さあ行こう！” (Alright, lets’ go!)

The phrase “さて” (sate) and equivalent “さてっと” (satetto) have a similar meaning to “さあ”. While they can be used to get attention of another person (さて、やってみよっか), I more often hear this pair used when talking to oneself.

  • さてっと。。。どれにしようかな。。。
  • Alrighty now…. Which of these should I choose…

さあ also has another meaning (not usually associated with さ) which is to express a lack of caring about something or disinterest (“どうでもいい”)

  • P1: どうして助けてあげないの？
  • P1: Why don’t you help him/her?
  • P2: さあ。。。
  • P2: Who cares…. (or  [shrug])

This carries a pretty cold, uncaring feeling, so be careful who you use it with. P2 in the above short dialog sounds like a real asshole to me. I’ve been told that saying “さあ。。。わからない” is a little bit less harsh. I think this is because that at least directly answers the question whereas さあ seems like more of an evasion.


The are even more uses of さ which I haven’t covered, like when it replaces the final い of an i-adjective to change that word to a noun, as in 嬉しい (happy  [adjective]) ＝＞嬉しさ (happiness [noun])

There is at least one regional dialect (方言) where さ has a different function. For example, in Yamagata dialect the following can be said:

  • どごいぐの？

This can be expressed in Tokyo (common) dialect as:

  • どこに行くの？

In addition to さ being used to mean に, the sound く is represented as ぐ and こ as ご.




Japanese grammar highlight: Word order in Japanese





  • Subject + Object + Verb
  • 僕がバナナを食べた。


  • Subject + Verb + Object
  • I ate (a) banana.


  • Subject + Location of action + Verb
  • 僕が日本で勉強した。

In English we have,

  • Subject + Verb + Location of action
  • I studied in Japan.




  • 赤いリンゴ。
  • Red apple.


  • 僕が買った本。
  • The book (that) I bought



  • I wasn’t listening to what the teacher told me.






  • I think it will rain.


  • I think “it will rain”.


In Japanese, this is reversed with the phrase coming first.

  • 雨がふると思う。



  • 僕は雨がふると思う。
  • 雨がふると僕は思う。



  • What is this?
  • 何やってるんだ俺は？
  • What am I doing?




  • Object + Topic + Verb
  • We are going to research that.




  • If clause + Then clause


  • When I opened the box I was surprised.





Manga Review: Hyakumanjou labryinth (百万畳ラビリンス)












Need something translated from Japanese to English?

In the process of writing this blog, one thing I’ve discovered is that I enjoy the challenge of translating from Japanese to English.

To that end, I’ve decided to put out a call for translation requests. I’m open to translating anything including portions of Manga, TV dramas, movies, novels, or newspapers. The only requirement is that you can provide the source material to me. For text, something that I can cut and paste is best, but photographs are fine as long as they are clear enough to see the details of all characters.

For now let’s keep things short, to only a few paragraphs of text, pages of Manga, or a minute or so of audio.

Although I don’t have any professional credentials, I’ve been doing this long to enough so I can do at least a decent job on simple translation, although if it is a domain I am not too familiar with (for example, medical literature) I might have some difficulty translating it properly.

I prefer Japanese to English, but if you really need something in English translated to Japanese I am open to making the attempt, though I cannot guarantee 100% natural Japanese in this cases.

If you are interested please feel free to respond to this page, or you can email me directly at selftaughtjapanese (at) For the purpose of spam protection I’ve added an extra ‘m’ to the second part of the address (gmmail), please remove that before sending.

Based on my free time, I’ll tackle requests I receive in a first come, first serve, basis, and will post the results on my blog so others can learn from the translations.

While there are many automated translation services available that can do this type of work, I’ll do my best to have the results in natural, clear English which is something computers aren’t quite able to achieve yet.

Japanese band highlight: Jizue (ジズー)


  • 山田剛（Gou Yamada) – Bass
  • 井上典政（Noriyuki Inoue) – Guitar
  • 片木希依（Kie Katagi) – Piano
  • 粉川心（Shin Kokawa) – Drums

As to the band’s style, I think the blurb on the band’s profile page sums it up pretty well:


(The band’s) sound is a perfectly balanced composition of a soul-shaking power influenced by rock and hardcore music, a sense of swing inherited from Jazz, and sweet lyrical melodies.

Most of my listening experience of this band has come from their second album, Novel, which has several complex, up-beat songs performed brilliantly by these four skilled musicians. One of my favorites is “kotonoha” (which means “words” or “language” in Japanese), and is one of their few songs with a vocal track. Another of my favorites, this one a bit slower tempo, is “Pray” which features Kie’s beautiful piano melodies which dance between melancholy and bright moments. You can hear the entire album on YouTube here, or find it on the Apple Music service.

One of my only gripes with this great band is that they are apt to break out mid-song into what I call ‘jam-mode’, where they adopt a more less structured, more repetitive style that almost sounds like Jazz-Techno at some points (not necessarily a good thing). Once or twice I was strongly reminded of similar jams in the classic bluegrass/fusion band Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, though overall I feel Bela’s team is more skilled. Check Jizue’s song “Sun” for an example of this. At around three minutes into this song I was ready to press the ‘next’ button, though the end partially redeems itself with a return to a more melodic sounds (only after some more tedious riffs and a few quirky key changes). The band calls their approach to this album innovative (革新的) and I’ll give them credit since this mixed style is innovative.

Jizue is written in Japanese as ジズー which would be written in romaji as “Jizuu”. In an interview the band reveals their name comes from the famous French soccer player Zinedine Zidane’s nickname “Zizou”. It’s an especially fitting name since the band members were all childhood friends who played soccer together. The full text of the interview is here, and this makes for good Japanese reading practice if you are interested.

In spite of the tedious moments, Jizue (especially their Novel album) is overall a great listening experience, especially if you are into instrumental music like I am. From what I have seen, this band is more about enjoying the creative expression process as opposed to making money, which is a trait that has become harder to find lately.

If you like this band, consider checking out “Gesu no Kiwami Otome” which I reviewed previously here. They are a group with strong instrumentalists and vocals, and have some similarities with Jizue.

Image credit: the image was taken from their website’s biography page (


Can one increase conversation fluency in Japanese without a language partner?


















Kendama is a traditional Japanese toy consisting of a ball (玉, tama) and cross-shaped base (usually made out of wood) which are connected via a thin, long string (糸, ito). In addition to the handle, which can be held comfortably with one hand, the base contains three small indented areas of various sizes (called “皿”, or plates) plus a pointy top called the “けん先” (sword tip). In Japanese “kendama” is written most commonly as “けん玉”, though there are other variations including 剣玉. The name is a combination of the words for “sword” plus “ball”.

It is said there are from 300 to 50,000 different techniques (技, waza), but the easiest and most basic is to use motion of your wrist to flip up the ball to land in one of the three dishes. This is called “皿系” (“saraito”). Though the construction and techniques are quite different, I feel there is some similarity between the kendama and the popular yo-yo toy.

Historically, there is records of similar devices made of a ball, cup, and string existing from long ago, in use by the Ainu people of Japan as well as native American tribes near the great lakes in America. Around the 16th century, a similar toy called the bilboquet was popular in France with not only only children, but also nobles and upper-class citizens.

In Japan, the first recorded evidence of a device similar to the kendama was around the early 19th century, and in the early 20th century something very similar to the modern-day kendama was said to be in existence.

The Japan Kendama Association (日本けん玉協会) maintains the current kendama rules, issues official rankings, and also helps promote kendama. There are tournaments where people come from all around the world to participate, including those who might consider themselves “pro” kendama athletes. In the video at the bottom of this article you can see the winner of a kendama event doing some very advanced techniques that would take quite a bit of practice to acquire.

Having said that, performing basic kendama maneuvers is within the reach of anyone with average hand-eye coordination, and I’ve seen videos of a 3 year old Japanese boy doing some of these. If you do decide to buy one for your young child, be cognizant of their maturity level and watch them at all times when using this toy, since the hard ball can cause injuries to both themselves and nearby people and objects.

Though at first the kendama may appear to be a simple toy, it is said that proper practice using this can train both the mind and body, increasing endurance and concentration ability. When attempting a kendama technique, the line between successful execution and failure is usually very clear, and this is said to help children learn the process of striving to achieve a specific goal, something that can be applied to sports or studies.

In recent years, kendama has become popular in many other countries throughout the world. In America, for example, it’s fairly easy to find it in toystores, and of course you can find many variants on online sites such as Amazon.

In 1998, the toy company Takara (what is now Takara Tomy) released a digital version of the kendama, called in Japanese “電子けん玉”  (or shortened as dejiken). It uses sound and lights to respond to success or failure, and has several different play modes.

I own one of the simple wooden ones, and after a few hours of practice am able to execute the basic “saraito” around 30% of the time. If you find one of these at a toy store I recommend picking it up, you might find yourself addicted in no time.


Image credit: the featured image was taken from the Japanese wikipedia entry about Kendama.



Japanese grammar: the word ‘無し’ [なし, nashi] and related terms

The Japanese word “なし” (romaji: “nashi”, Kanji: “無し”) is one that I have come across now and then, but really didn’t have a thorough understanding of. So I decided to do some research and in this post I’ll report my results. (Note: I am not talking about 梨 (nashi), which means ‘pear’).

“なし” has a very similar meaning to the common word “ない” (nai) which means something does not exist or is not present, as in the sentence “スイカはない” which means “There is no watermelon”. Technically, both なし and なし are adjectives (形容詞), which may be surprising since the opposite of “ない” is “ある” (aru) which is a verb. “ない” follows the common pattern of having a い at the end of adjectives in modern Japanese. But there are a few adjectives like “なし” which end in し instead, such as “よし”(yoshi), and these are said to be leftovers from Middle Japanese, a form of classic Japanese used between the years of 800-1600.

Despite the fact that なし is an adjective, it is treated more like a noun. Let’s start with a few simple example sentences.

  • 問題ない。
  • 問題なし。
  • No problem。

Here the meaning is pretty much identical, and the way these two words are used is the same. Another phrase I like to use is “文句無し” (monku nashi) which means “no complaints”.

An opposite for なしwith similar classical nuance is 有り(あり, ari), so you can say  “問題あり” (mondai ari)  to mean there is a problem.

For the most part, you are not going to see なし used as an general-purpose replacement for ない. Instead, なし is used in a few set phrases that are good to memorize. Here is one.

  • それは無しにするよ。
  • I’ll forget about that for you.

Literally, this sentence means something like “As for that, I’ll make it into nothing”. I’ve heard this used when someone is forgiving another person for something they did wrong, but it can be used for other things as well. Here we can see that なし (nashi) is not being conjugated into ”なく” but instead a に is added after it, as if it was a noun.The equivalent expression with ない would be “それは無くするよ” though I’ve never heard that in real use.

One of the most useful ways to use なし is in combination with で to make “なしで” (nashi de), which means “without”. For example,

  • 僕はお酒なしで楽しめるよ。
  • I can have fun without alcohol.

This can also be used for people.

  • 大人なしで行こうよ。
  • Let’s go without our parents.

“なしに” (nashi ni) can also be used to mean “without”

  • それなしには生きていられない。
  • I can’t live without that.

Notice the “は” after ”なしに”, which implies “I can’t live without that, but there are other things I can live without”.

By the way, if you wanted to express the idea of “without” regarding a certain action, you can add で to the end of a verb in the negative form (i.e. しない + で = しないで (shinai de)):

  • 歯を磨かないで寝ちゃった。
  • I went to sleep without brushing my teeth.

An expression with similar meaning is ”verb + こと＋なく”.

  • 怒ることなく生きていきたい。
  • I want to live without getting upset.

There are several compound words which contain なし at the end of them and are considered nouns. For example

  • ろくでなしが来た。
  • The loser is here.

“ろくでなし” (roku de nashi) means someone who is good for nothing and doesn’t do anything useful.

Two other words in this category are “文無し” (mon nashi) which means “penniless”, and “人でなし” (hito de nashi) which means “inhuman”.

The word “台無し” (dai nashi) is used when something is wasted or becomes useless or valueless.

  • デザートが台無しになっちゃった。
  • The dessert went to waste.  (= The dessert went bad without anyone eating it)

The expression “こともなし” (koto mo nashi) is used in the translation of the famous poem ‘Pippa Passes’ by Robert Browning. Here are the two relevant lines, first with English and then one possible Japanese translation.


God’s in His heaven

All’s right with the world!




Here, we can see that こともなし is used to mean something like ”問題なし”.

Interestingly, I heard this line in the first episode of the classic giant robot anime Rahxephon, which I highly recommend.


  1. 無し is usually pronounced close to ‘nash’, with no ‘i’ sound or a very subtle one. The ‘a’ here is similar to the vowel sound in ‘rush’, except it has a deeper sound. Imagine opening the back of your throat and saying ‘aaaahhhh’ to get a feel for this, except your lips should only be open a tiny bit.
  2. “無き” (naki) has similar meaning to 無し, however it is used even less frequently. There are a few expressions that use it like “無きに等しい” (equal to nothing) and “名無き” (nameless).