Free Japanese reading resources
Learning Japanese in an immersive environment can skyrocket the rate of your progress.
This can be a bit tricky if you are not in Japan, but you can still immerse yourself in Japanese texts!
Check out the following useful websites!
THREAD
Monday morning at the staffroom printer.
Teachers: “Hey, how was your weekend?”
Japanese teachers: “Let’s step aside so others can use the printer. Anyway, how was your weekend?”
It was fascinating to watch how comfort level, assumptions, and confidence shaped these interactions.
Have you experienced something like this in Japan (or elsewhere)?
While traveling in Japan with my students from Australia, I noticed Japanese people tend to communicate in three very different ways when speaking with non-Japanese.
3. Go silent
At restaurants, I saw staff who simply stopped talking.
It seemed they weren’t confident in English — and maybe felt awkward speaking Japanese to a foreigner.
The result: quiet hand gestures and pointing.
How many Japanese words with 車 (sha = vehicle) do you know?
電車 (densha) – train
自動車 (jidōsha) – car
自転車 (jitensha) – bicycle
観覧車 (kanransha) – Ferris wheel 🎡
If it moves on wheels you’ll often see 車 at the end.
Language learning is hard because it takes courage because first, you’ll have to admit how much you don’t know.
It’s that messy mix of confidence and vulnerability and that’s not easy for students these days. No wonder it feels challenging.
This system survives in today’s Kyoto street and place names ��� so when you walk along Shijō-dōri or visit Nijō Castle, you’re literally stepping through history.
When Heian-kyō (平安京) was founded in 794, the capital was laid out on a grid plan inspired by Chinese city design.
Streets running east ⇄ west were numbered 一条 (ichi-jō), 二条 (ni-jō), 三条 (san-jō)…
Streets running north ⇅ south were called 坊 (bō).
My friend said every Japanese stuff that has ‘yaki’ in its name is great.
Taiyaki
Takoyaki
Yakininu
Okonomiyaki
So I said ‘what about 根性焼き (konjō yaki)?
What about 根性焼き (konjō yaki)
根性 means one’s willpower, guts, grit.
根性焼きis the act of pressing a lit cigarette against the skin to leave a burn, or the raised scar it creates. It comes from Shōwa-era delinquent culture, as a show of toughness or a test of grit.