A foreigner’s guide to Japanese honorific, humble and polite forms.

The Japanese phrases しょうがない (shou ga nai) and 仕方がない (shikata ga nai) express your graceful resilience in situations out of our control. They communicate something that doesn’t translate neatly into English, and yet they are used all the time in Japanese.  So, let’s learn these uniquely Japanese expressions, how they express a Japanese cultural sentiment, […]

You’ve probably learned the Japanese word ちょっと (chotto), but did you know it can be used for almost any situation? While most people learn ちょっと as meaning “a little,” it actually has a much wider variety of uses for different contexts.  As we dive into how ちょっと is actually used in Japanese conversation, we will […]

In Japanese, you can say Happy New Year with various expressions, so let’s get familiar with a few phrases.

If you’ve been to Japan long enough, you’ve likely run into nanpa, or the act of trying to pick up strangers in Japanese…

Have you ever wanted to ask someone you are romantically interested in out on a date in Japan? The most straightforward way to do so in Japanese is デートしませんか (Deeto shimasen ka), which means “Would you like to go on a date?” While this is technically correct, you might notice that not a lot of […]

With a history of almost 1300 years in Japan, we explore the origins of Children’s Day, its connections to China, and some of its most revered traditions.

Celebrated annually on 4th May, this relatively young is linked to one of Japan’s youngest colours.