Apr
17
2010

Nihonshock’s new vocab section

Following on yesterday’s graphical tweak of the site, I’ve added a new feature: Vocabulary.

These are basically short posts (just a paragraph or so) about a specific Japanese word that I thought was either interesting or worth talking about. The words included will (for the most part) be…

  Read full article

Do you know these Japanese words?

These words are the latest additions to the Nihonshock Vocabulary Bank (updated daily... mostly). Want to see all the words?

殺風景

さっぷうけい [sappuukei] – A bland or uninspiring environment. 風景 [fuukei] is the word for a scene or view of somewhere.

[Read More]
夏バテ

なつばて [natsubate] – Something about the 38℃ days just makes you tired, you know. In Japanese, that fatigue is called 夏バテ.

[Read More]
Jan
01
2010

Nihonshock 2010

In any country, the start of a New Year is a time to reflect upon the past and to make goals and plans for the future. In the English-speaking world, we have “New Year’s Resolutions” but in Japan they have 新年の目標 (shinnen no mokuhyou).

How did you do last year? What are your goals for the new year?…

Nihonshock 2010
  Read full article
Sep
21
2009

Silver Week in Japan

Many of you may have heard of Golden Week, a string of Japanese holidays in early May that is a major time for Japanese people to go on vacation. But I doubt as many have heard of Silver Week! But there’s a good reason you may not have heard of it though: this year is the first Silver Week ever…

Silver Week in Japan
  Read full article
Aug
30
2009

Seiken Koutai (Power Change)

政権交代 (せいけんこうたい) , or “power change” was the battle cry of the Democratic party here in Japan for the last month or so as everything built up to today’s Lower House election…

Seiken Koutai (Power Change)
  Read full article
Aug
29
2009

NihonShock is born!

It was a few weeks ago that I suddenly decided for no reason in particular to start thowing random Japanese proverbs and their English translations/equivalents onto Twitter. Most likely I was just bored (if necessity is the mother of invention, boredom is the handsome young milkman). After a couple days I got the urge to step up from the realm of short, quickly buried and forgotten tweets to an actual blog…

NihonShock is born!
  Read full article