Okay so its not quiet Monday it’s Tuesday, but onto episode 2 of Mr. Nietzche in the Convenience Store anyway! In this episode it seems everyone has some kind of scheme, except for Matsukoma and Nii who are just poor innocent bystanders haha. Once again this review will have some spoilers so you can skip to the bottom for the vocab list, if you don’t want to know anything about the episode. Continue reading
Author: Linda
Talking to strangers?!
As anyone would tell you when learning a language, whether its Japanese or something else, it is important to not only learn vocabulary and grammar, but to put it into use. I may not be the best person to give advice on this, since I have been lax in this part of learning myself. I get so caught up wanting to memorize everything and learn more that I forget how important it is to actually speak to someone. Now talking to strangers can seem intimidating especially in the beginning, when your just starting to learn, but don’t let that hold you back. When I first started learning Japanese, I didn’t want to talk to anyone because I didn’t think that I knew enough Japanese to have a conversation. Which, looking back now doesn’t make sense. Of course you can’t have a conversation if you never talk to anyone right? And if you never try how will you learn to? Continue reading
Mr. Nietzsche in the convenience store! ep.1
After being sick for a whole week and making sure my mom had an awesome mothers day, I finally had the time to watch Mr. Nietzsche in the Convenience Store! Yay me *claps for self* This TV drama is an adaptation of a popular shojo manga comedy series of the same name, I’ve never read it before so this series is completely new to me. The show centers around two convenience store employees, Matsukoma and Nii, who work the night shift. Matsukoma is a college graduate who has been looking for work for 2 years, and Nii is a Buddism major still in school.
The way that I decided to watch the series is first without any subtitles on, then again with the subtitles in order to catch everything that I missed. I do this to see how much I can understand on my own, and increase my listening comprehension. I also make notes of new words in a notebook as I watch. I am watching the series on crunchyroll which allows you to turn off the subtitles by right-clicking and selecting no subtitles. At the end of this post I will place the list of vocab words that I made from the show.
Busuu Success!
I was selected to complete the Busuu study! I have to say I didn’t think I was gonna make it, since the last few weeks were tough time wise, but I did! and I’m happy! I went back up to the Mcgraw hill office in Manhattan, to take the same placement test that we had to take in the beginning. This time I definitely did a whole lot better then last time, but I was still under level one (hey I tried), it also took me a lot longer to get through the whole test. Now that I have completed the study, Continue reading
New Series! J dramas!
Hi, all! I’ve decided to start a series about J dramas, and how I use them to help me learn. I plan to pick a series and review each episode as well as list what new things I learned while watching. I want it to just be a fun series where you can come read a funny review and learn some new vocabulary words, maybe some different sentence structures. Continue reading
Learning while gaming!

Who says that you can’t learn while playing video games! There sadly aren’t a whole lot of video games out there made specifically for people learning Japanese, but there are some games out there targeted to Japanese learners. The system I’ll be talking about today is the DS Lite which is an older system I know, but if you have a 3DS these games will also work on it even though the new 3DS is region locked. If you don’t have a DS Lite and want one you can get a used one on eBay for about 20$, now with that out of the way on to the games! Continue reading
Japanese Textbooks
I haven’t bought a ton of Japanese textbooks, aside from some workbooks and study aides that I’ve purchased. The majority of my textbooks come from Japanese courses that I was taking and kept using. The textbooks that I mainly use are the Minna no Nihongo series, I took a Japanese language course some time ago and these where the books that we used in class. So I’m pretty use to them and I like the way that they increase in difficulty.I found these books to be Continue reading
Learning the Basics : Kana
When you start your Japanese language learning journey, I highly suggest that you learn their writing system right away and do not use romanji. The Japanese writing system may seem complicated at first, but it really isn’t. The writing system is a combination of kanji and kana. Kana consists of two syllabaries, called hiragana and katakana. Hiragana is used for native Japanese words, and Katakana is used for foreign words, names, as well as loan words. Kanji isn’t something Continue reading
Learning Spanish?!
I have been using many different apps and websites to help me on my quest to learn Japanese and recently one of them contacted me. The learning app called Busuu is conducting an 8 week study in order to judge its effectiveness in helping people learn. They reached out to their users to see who would be able/ willing to participate in the research study. At first Continue reading
Why I Self Study
When I first started studying Japanese in high school me and a few friends would go online to sites like Japanese-online.com and try to study different phrases, sentences and structures etc. needless to say we didn’t get very far. Not because of the website but because we were impatient, plus we had a ton of other school related things to do.
I continued to study bits here and there till college when Continue reading