Author Archives: Kenneth

Japanese Words for Food covers common food items in western and Japanese cuisine, including ingredients, dishes, drinks, and snacks. The next couple vocab lists will be countries, colors, and school subjects.

Beginning Vocabulary: Adjectives is a list of useful adjectives for beginners, organized by topic, with notes on usage. Several more specific adjective vocab pages coming up: Colors Likes and Dislikes Comparisons

Next in the early beginning lessons revisions, The Structure of a Japanese Sentence has finally received some editing. No major changes this time, just a few things fixed here and there. “Politeness and Formality” and “Pitch Accent and Vowel Devoicing” … Continue reading →

Beginning Vocabulary: Classroom Objects is the first vocab-specific page in the Beginning Lessons. For a full listing of all vocab-related pages, see Basic Japanese Vocabulary.

Telling Time is the second lesson in the numbers series of Beginning Lessons, which started with Counting in Japanese. This lesson covers the pronunciations of time in hours and minutes, intervals of time (from X to Y) as well as … Continue reading →

I spent some time fixing up Hiragana and the Japanese Sound System, and to a lesser extent Hiragana and the Japanese Sound System, Part 2. The basic organization is the same, but the guide should now be a bit more … Continue reading →

Having gone through a couple of name changes but not a change in content, Introduction to the Japanese Language has been revised and slightly expanded. This page covers background information for beginning Japanese learners, and should also be an enjoyable … Continue reading →

The first number related lesson, Counting in Japanese, covers Japanese numbers up to 1000. It also discusses the differences between yon/shi for 4, nana/shichi for 7, and kyuu/ku for 9, and introduces the counters ban and banme. Subsequent lessons will cover … Continue reading →