Sumimasen is another of these pesky Japanese words that is difficult to pin down with a simple translation. It means different things in different circumstances, so again, it is a word that must be experienced to be truly mastered.

There are several potential meanings for the word sumimasen, depending on the context. It can be meant [...]

Yesterday I came across a BBC website which contains ‘Essential Phrases‘ for learning Japanese. I’ve linked it here, but you probably won’t find it particularly useful. Not least because of the fact that they have mangled some of the simple translations that they have on the site. The most aggregious of these [...]

The other day a student asked me a question about the use of the word ‘ashi’ (足, 脚). This is a seemingly simple word, which is probably one of the first that any child or any Japanese learner will learn. But it does come with a few quirks…

First of all, the word ‘ashi’ roughly translates as [...]

Yesterday I was teaching English to a small group of mostly retired Japanese people, and we were discussing the differences between the English and Japanese languages. While this is certainly a vast simplification, the Japanese language tends to be more focused on ‘bang for your buck’, by trying to squeeze the most meaning possible from [...]