Victory Manual

It’s best to forgive, but never forget.
That’s, perhaps, one of the best traits of the culture I was raised in - Our stubborn insistance on remembering the past, but always expressing gratitude for our current lot in life.
(Note: “The culture I was raised in,” does not refer to the U.S.)

I thought I’d share with all of you other Japanese language learners out there a(nother) novel way of studying, this time with the Japanese version of Wikiquote.
It couldn’t be more straightforward, really. You just look up the name of one of your favorite writers, and there you have some of their best works translated [...]

Personal experience, especially when it’s limited, can lead a person to a counterfactual conclusion. This is true in all areas of life, and particularly true for people living in a foreign culture.
In my own social involvement within the foreign community of bloggers (and commenters) who live in Japan, I’ve read countless overgeneralizations, downright stereotypes, [...]

I don’t like the term “real life” used in the sense of “life spent in the physical presence of people as opposed to online”, because life spent at home online is just as “real” as life spent at the movies, at a desk on a conference call, or simply in front of the television.
What people [...]

I’m a fan of creativity, even in advertisements. I won’t necessarily buy a product because of a well thought out commercial, but I appreciate their efforts. One thing I can’t stand, though, is contradiction in advertising, whether intentional or mistaken.
I absolutely couldn’t stand* the Sprite campaign, “Image is nothing, thirst is everything.” [...]

After writing up a post about translating humor, specifically focusing on Darjeeling Limited in Japanese, I searched for the official movie site in Japanese and was happy to find that there was a trailer with Japanese subtitles. I’d like to document the English script and Japanese subtitles below, with a brief comparison following.
[Francis] [...]

Two weeks ago, I read on a friend’s mixi journal a post about his favorite Woody Allen films, and he noted one point of concern over the accuracy of his Jewish humor comprehension. Let me tell you that this friend is a very competent English speaker, but, even so, he still has worries about [...]

Mrs. Victory Manual, who has passed both JLPT level one and the JETRO Business Japanese Test, shared her very own manuel de victoire with moi.
In very scientific terms, she told me that the secret winning study strategy for the JLPT is, “choosing one textbook and studying it from cover to cover.”
×
Very anticlimactic. But, I’m [...]

I’ve mentioned before that I watch Japanese dramas for both entertainment and for study, and I briefly wrote about a couple that I was watching at the time, but for those of you who are new to the Japanese drama world and don’t feel like wading through a lot of the just-plain-trash-dramas, allow me to [...]

For those of you on the other side of the ocean, here are a couple of videos put together of Lani that we shot this weekend while we lounged around the house.