Blog Japanese Learning Blog

Unlike China and Korea, which still follow the old calendar, Japan celebrates New Year according to the the modern calendar. The celebration is considered to be a more important event than Christmas and as such, many companies and public facilities have about a week long holiday from the end of the year to around Jan 1st […]

(日本語はギャラリーの下をご覧ください） What kind of year was 2014 to everyone? 「みなさんにとって2014年はどんな年でしたか？」 With that question, our first year-end party as Coto Japanese Academy began. The venue this time was the organic restaurant Salt and Soil, a 2 minute walk from the school. There was delicious food and an all you can drink plan, and over 70 students […]

How Can I Say “Goodbye” in Japanese? Are you using Sayonara to say “goodbye” in Japanese? It may not mean quite what you think…Using さよなら (Sayonara) to express FarewellCasual ConversationsIn Formal Context…Not meeting for a while… Using さよなら (Sayonara) to express Farewell One of the first words that you will learn when studying Japanese is さよなら (sayonara), […]

We are planning many events for 2015. Here are ones that have already been scheduled. If you are interested, by all means please keep your schedule open!

Do you all like mountain climbing? Have you ever been hiking in Japan? Every spring and fall, we at Coto Japanese Academy arrange day-trip hiking tours to various mountains in the Kanto region. Ms. Mitsuoka, one of our teachers, served as our guide this time. Mountain climbing is a big hobby of hers, and she […]

Ikebana (the art of flower arrangement) is very well known as one of the traditions of Japanese culture. Have you ever experienced it? There are many ikebana schools, but among them, the most famous one overseas is the Sogetsu school of flower arrangement. We at Coto Japanese Academy would love for everybody to enjoy Japanese […]

Click Here to join our 30 day challenge to learn Hiragana Contents: Counting from 1 to 10,000 in Japanese Japanese numbers above 100,000 Numbers in Japanese over 100,000,000 Japanese Numbers are fairly simple. It advances on a base ten system, so you’ll be able to use the numbers by learning 1 to 10 and then learning […]

Article written by our contributor Jason Cohen. He has a master's degree in Japanese language and worked in a variety of unique fields as a multi-cultural consultant and as a translator. Jason will explain to us the differences between Japanese and English in his point of view.

Harvest and BBQ tour – Visiting an Organic farm in Chiba Growing and selling of organic vegetables as “safe edible vegetables” has lately become very popular in Japan. With the help of Ms. Tsukada at Vegelink who does delivery service of organic vegetables from farmers to private parties , we visited the farm of Mr. […]

Have you seen those boats that look like houseboats floating on the Sumida River or Tokyo Bay? In Japanese they are called “屋形船 yakatabune.” The kanji characters mean a boat that is shaped like a roof, and they are boats with on-board facilities to hold eating and drinking parties. (日本語の記事はアルバムの下をご覧ください） What is “Yakatabune 屋形船” A […]

In our fifth interview, we asked Mr.Ajay, who came to Japan in January 2014 and took the Coto intensive course for four months, about his improvements in Japanese and how his everyday life has changed.

{Join Local Japanese Festival in Iidabashi!} Summer in Japan means festival time! A street normally filled with the coming and going of cars and people is closed off just for this day and filled with festival stands. Walk around with unique festival foods and enjoy scenes only viewable on festival days. Festivals were originally held […]