Tofugu.com – Wonky Japanese Language and Culture

The Best Jerry, the Best! (anyone catch this reference, or am I old?)

At Tofugu, we don’t do a very good job keeping you up to date on Japanese news. In fact, we do a pretty horrid job, because that’s not really our niche (though it’s hard to pass up the occasional fun story). There are a few sites that thankfully do a good job at keeping up with Japanese news, but they tend to be overflowing with content and it’s hard to keep up, even for an RSS guru like myself. That’s why I love JapanSoc, and you should to.

JapanSoc is a lot like Digg, except it’s only for Japan-related things. Better than Digg, it has a great (friendly) community, it focuses on a specific niche (Japan), and works really really well. Whenever I want to know what’s going on in Japan (and only want to know the interesting / important things), this is where I go – otherwise there’s just too much noise, and I can’t keep up! Read more…

Japanese particles can be fun, if by fun you mean eye gouges and hair pulls. I haven’t come across too many people that enjoy Japanese particles. Tolerate? Sure, there are a few, but most people aren’t fans, and most teachers don’t make things too easy. Yesterday I taught a couple of courses on Japanese particles over at eduFire, and did everything I could to make particles easy and understandable. I figure if someone like me, who lacks a technical understanding of all grammar (in English, especially), can understand particles, then so should everyone else. I made things easy, cut out the fat, and simplified everything as much as possible, and I think for the most part it worked for people! Read more…

I just came across this article (which we’ll talk about more below), which made me think… why are you so lazy!? Of course, I’m only talking to those of you who don’t know how to use chopsticks (or hashi, in Japanese). If you’re heading to Japan (or most Asian countries) you should probably get on that, or just use one of these horrible inventions down below. It’s like putting kids with minor learning disabilities into special classes to make things easier on them. Not so good in the long run. Read more…

Nipponster recently updated their “Japanese toolbar,” which now includes my Top Ten List of Free Japanese Resources in an easy to access tab. After I was notified, I fired up a non-beta version of Firefox to try it out (also works on other browsers), and came away pretty impressed. It really puts together a lot of useful resources for Japanese learners and enthusiasts, all in one place. Here are some of the features you’ll see if you give it a whirl. Read more…