When speaking about family in Japanese, you will not use the same words whether your speaking about your loved ones or about another person’s family members.

Yoroshiku onegaishimasu (よろしくお願いします) is one of those quintessential Japanese words that is highly ingrained into the culture but very difficult to translate to English.

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 Japan, “rock paper scissors” is referred to as “じゃんけん”(Janken). Although it is called different names in different places, the rules of the game are generally the same in every country. The full countdown phrase is じゃんけんぽん (Janken pon!), equivalent to “Rock, Paper, Scissors, Shoot!”In Japan, janken is used to settle disagreements, select participants, and […]

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…