If you’ve been working in Japan for a while, you’ve probably noticed a flurry of emails from HR as the year winds down about nenmatsu chosei (年末調整). Nenmatsu chosei is a year-end tax procedure in Japan where your employer calculates your final income tax for the year and adjusts for any overpaid or underpaid amounts. […]

Some phrases work in so many situations, especially when you don’t need or want to be specific, and that’s exactly what makes やつ (yatsu) so useful. やつ is a phrase you don’t really learn from textbooks, but it’s something you use almost all the time, especially when you’re a bit uncertain. “Yatsu” is great go-to […]

Japanese punctuation marks, known as 役物 (yakumono), consist of commas, periods, and question & exclamation marks. They’re easy to overlook, but these small, seemingly insignificant marks make a sentence readable and easy to understand.  We use punctuation all the time in English ー you are seeing them being used in real time as you read […]

Now that you have landed a job interview in Japan, you must be wondering what manners you need to know. Understandably, you might be nervous since interviews are when you need to put your best foot forward. So, how should you present yourself in front of your potential employers? As you may know, Japan places […]

Are you homeschooling your child and looking for language learning resources? Japanese is a good fit for homeschoolers. Its writing systems are visual and pattern-based, so children can start recognizing characters quickly, and the reward comes fast: a few weeks in, they can read real words on a menu, a sign, or a favorite anime […]

Japanese horror are not just cheap thrills but are some of the most influential movies ever made from Godzilla to cinematic masterpieces.

While you might not believe in the otherworldly and mythology, it’s best to avoid going against Japanese superstitions.

Halloween in Japan is just around the corner, and when is a better time to learn some Japanese Halloween vocabulary, if not now? How else can you describe some of the ghosts, monsters, and creepy crawlers that will spring up across the nation? Japan is no stranger to celebrating various occasions, and Halloween is quickly […]