How to use Mixi
One tool I have often used in helping me understand Mixi and other Japanese websites is Google’s own Japanese translation services on it’s Language Tools page. Here, you’ll find tools to translate chunks of text or even full web pages to and from: Arabic Chinese English French German Italian Japanese Korean Portugese Russian Spanish It’s [...]
Mon, December 13 2010 » Learning Japanese » Comments Off
This one probably isn’t the friendliest tool for the beginner Japanese learner, but I find it especially helpful when trying to read Kanji and don’t know how to pronounce the characters. Copy and paste the word into Goo’s online Japanese dictionary and choose from Japanese-English or Japanese-Japanese and it will give you the hiragana reading [...]
Mon, December 13 2010 » Learning Japanese » Comments Off
Hi all, In between moving house and starting my own business, I haven’t updated the Mixi guide for some time, but things are ready to be posted very soon. Just to keep your minds sharp while waiting, check out this little brain testing game from the Coke site in Japan: You have to count the [...]
Mon, December 13 2010 » Learning Japanese » Comments Off
The Japanese language is quite different to English. While many find the learning curve to becoming fluent in Japanese quite steep (and I agree), I find Japanese to have a lot more structure and therefore easier to learn in many ways more than say French or Italian. The main reason for this is that the [...]
Mon, December 13 2010 » Learning Japanese » Comments Off
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: You already know how to read and write one of the 4 Japanese alphabet systems! Japan has 4 alphabets which are commonly used and you will need to know to improve your Japanese: Romaji Katakana Hiragana Kanji I’ve listed them here in order of difficulty. [...]
Mon, December 13 2010 » Learning Japanese » Comments Off