Victory Manual

Sesquipedalian. I don’t think I’ll ever fall out of obsession with that word. The definition is itself. It is its own definition. There’s something so satisfying about that. But that’s not what this is about.
Sesquipedalian is far from being a common vocabulary term. The same holds true of its [...]

Who’s making news in Japan?
Rockinginhakata.com’s Deas hit a little bit on the issue of balanced coverage in Japanese media of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election a couple of weeks ago, and it sparked my curiosity.
I ran each name of the three major candidates through Japanese news sites to see how many hits they came out [...]

Very unabashedly, I love Japanese proverbs, even the ones that contradict each other.
十人十色 - Literally meaning, “10 people, 10 colors.” This phrase emphasizes the individuality of humans. “As many opinions as people.”
出るくぎは打たれる - Literally, “The nail that sticks up is hammered down.” Contrasting the proverb above, this expresses the idea that it [...]

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 [...]

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.”
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Very anticlimactic. But, I’m [...]

So we’re (wife and I) watching some Japanese dramas at the moment, and I even came across a site that has the scripts in Japanese available! Can’t ask for more than that!
The dramas we’re watching are 薔薇のない花屋 (The flower shop with no roses) and エジソンの母 (Edison’s mom).
薔薇のない花屋, as the title implies, is a heavier [...]

When does incorrect grammar become correct? It’s obviously not an announcement made on the evening news. I guess it just slowly permeates through society until it reaches the gigantic, barricaded textbook walls, and adamantly bashes at the gates until they finally barge.
I started thinking about this again lately as I’ve been lightly reading/studying [...]

My personal favorite site in Japanese is 教えて！goo, an open forum for questions on a wide range of topics. (I enjoy reading the 国語 forum)
Another goo site that I like is the インターネット調査 - goo リサーチ site, which features the results from a variety of surveys.
What Japanese sites (in Japanese) do some of you [...]

次の文は村上春樹の『世界の終わりとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド』からの引用だ。
太陽はなぜ今も輝きつづけるのか
鳥たちはなぜ唄いつづけるのか
彼らは知らないのだろうか
世界がもう終わってしまったことを
これは『菊川デイズ』という詩からの引用だそうだ。