If you see "ノーチャージ" at the entrance of a bar, what would you do? As it says, "no charge," will…
寒(さむ)い or 冷(つめ)たい
寒(さむ)い or 冷(つめ)たい Both words mean "cold" but the usage is very different. さむい is generally used when the…
渋い(しぶい)
Persimmons Last week, I wrote a passage about persimmons. There I put a word 渋み(しぶみ) in brackets as the translation…
ききます
先生の話を聴きます ききます is one of the most basic verb which students learn at a very early stage but it has…
富士山(ふじさん)
Mt.Fuji This is the photo of Mt. Fuji, the highest mountain in Japan. It is the most famous mountain in…
SIMフリー
Today is Tuesday, so I am going to talk about a katakana word that has a completely different meaning from…
マンション
Before I moved to Australia, I used to live in a マンション in Kyoto! That had 5 floors up and…
てForm
As a native speaker of Japanese, I did not know thatてform is the first hurdle learners of Japanese face. …
さびしい or さみしい?
Somebody asked me the difference between the two. A short answer is “not much.” They are mostly interchangeable. However, as…
か
Lots of students remember か is a question mark in Japanese but it seems か being "or" is not very well…
コンセント
Every Tuesday, I’m planning to write about a katakana word which has a very different meaning from the original English…
きます、はきます、します、つけます、かけます
What is the one English phrase that can be used for all of the above 5? The answer is…
きて、きって、きいて
When I first started teaching Japanese, I did not understand why Australian students had so much trouble distinguishing among きて,…
バイキング – All you can eat in Japan
It is often used in a context like ランチバイキング and ケーキバイキング. If you know Katakana, I don’t think it is…
ごはん、ライス、米(こめ)、玄米(げんまい)、籾(もみ)、稲(いね)
If you are an HSC Continuers’ course student, I hope you understood the first 2 or 3 of these words.…
ストーブ
If you can read Katakana, I’m sure you can figure out ストーブ is “stove,” but do you know what a…
Expressions with 虫(むし)
The other day, I talked about 虫歯/むしば (carious teeth). It seems ancient people in Japan thought 虫(むし) caused a lot…
梅雨(つゆ、ばいう)
Anytime this week, the Japan Weather Association is going to announce the start of 梅雨(つゆ、ばいう)in the main island(本州/ほんしゅう)of Japan. 梅雨(つゆ、ばいう)is…
六月四日は虫歯の日
The heading reads ろくがつよっかはむしばのひ and it means “4 June is the day of carious teeth.” In fact, in Japan, the…
この vs これ
This post explains the difference between これ (a pronoun) and この (a prenoun adjectival – 連体詞/れんたいし). The same applies to それ and その, あれ and あの, etc.