This is How to Japanese, a monthly newsletter with something about Japan/Japanese and a dash of いろいろ.

日本・日本語：Taking a break

As suggested by the title of this month’s newsletter, I’m taking a break! My wife and I are expecting later this month, so I thought this would be a good month to take it easy on myself so I can get into the right mental space to be a parent. I’ve published the newsletter every month since September 2020 and something on the blog since February 2008, with a handful of months MIA due to grad school and the post-grad school job transition, so hopefully this is somewhat earned.

While I’m on break, take a look through my backlog of writing. Here are some of my favorite things I’ve written (that I can remember, ha):

  • 育休 (ikukyū) is a compound in the form ADJECTIVE + NOUN, so the character 育 which gets used in the verbs for raising children + 休 for vacation/break. Take a look at this post I wrote about the categories of kanji compounds to help improve your reading/skimming skills.
  • During the pandemic, I learned how to make natto and wrote about it for the Japan Times. I no longer need to rely on this skill now that I’m living in Japan and natto is plentiful and cheap, but I can recommend it for all of you abroad. The most difficult part is getting the natto spores, although I picked up some on Amazon back in 2020. An Instant Pot is helpful, and I think the key is making sure the beans are cooked. The time I recommend in the article is not enough time for them to steam.
  • I also wrote a feature about Japanese craft beer for the Japan Times back in 2016. A lot of what I wrote still holds up. I could probably put together a follow up, but not too much has changed other than the equalization of tax rates which might explain the very, very slow expansion of flavors in macrobrew. The recent Kirin Good Ale might be the best example of this. Essentially it’s a classic American pale ale. I’ll be curious to see if it has the staying power of Suntory’s Premium Malts. Adjacent to beer, there’s been major growth in chuhai/highball beverages.
  • If you’re a Murakami fan, you could always check out my close reading of Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. I compared the two Japanese editions (yes, two) and the original English translation. I’m slowly adding Rubin’s new translations of the quotes I looked at so I can compare. Hopefully I’ll be able to write or podcast about it at some point. Stay tuned.
  • I’ve got a few other Murakami-related projects. My liveblog of Murakami Haruki’s 2009 novel 1Q84 was probably the most attention I ever got on the blog and I think helped build some of my readership. It was a fun thing to do for a novel that was not very good. 
  • And I do an annual Murakami Fest which has overlapped in places with my Hard-boiled Wonderland Project and my reading of his memoir Distant Drums. 
  • Completionists can spend the next month trying to read the 70+ articles I wrote for the Japan Times Bilingual Page. My articles about emails and letters have gotten particularly good reviews. Check out my portfolio for links to all the articles.
  • I think this article on learning political vocabulary is one of the better articles I ever wrote and gets at something fundamental about learning a language. I could say the same for the article on keigo and pronouns also mentioned in the blog post.
  • The Japan Times has also let me connect with some pretty cool people for their Why Did You Leave Japan column, one of those being legendary Japanese blues/funk guitarist Yamagishi June, whose music I’ve been listening to since the early 2000s. (I learned about the band indirectly from my sixth grade science teacher.) Papa Grows Funk has sadly disbanded (along with their weekly Monday night residency at the Maple Leaf) but Yamagishi is still playing.
  • Hopefully you’re already familiar with my past newsletter content. If not, please do give those a read as well. I thought this one on いい歳 was interesting. 角ハイ was an interesting look at the development of the whiskey market in Japan over the past fifteen years. And I’ve gradually been going through some “Impossible Pairs” in the last year (and I have a bunch left on my list to write about).
  • And last but not least, I’ll share my exploration of the top 50 bestselling enka songs, which I counted down 10 at a time and analyzed as a project when my Bilingual page article about enka was published. Not all of the links still work, but some do! And all have permalinks to YouTube searches where surely the songs will turn up. Writing more about enka is something I’d definitely do if I had the time, but I’ll admit my interest has waned a bit in recent years. 

There’s plenty more to check out, but I’ll leave it at that. One of my favorite feelings is discovering a writer online and being completely drawn in by their writing, and then realizing that they have a huge back catalog to dig through. I hope I can provide something similar for folks out on the path to Japanese fluency.

いろいろ：

  • The blog and podcast are online. On the pod I mostly go over the articles above with some additional commentary. I still haven't fully articulated my thoughts on the Japanese beer scene, so stay tuned for more on that. It's a very interesting time in the market, and not a bad time to be a beer drinker in Japan.
  • I'll include a few of my current favorite TikTok videos as bonus content: Takato is biking across America from New York to California, and currently he's in the US South.
  • If you're in Yokohama, go find Yoshimura Hiroshi's 環境音楽 (kankyō ongaku, environmental music)! Take a look at the account's other videos to see all of the installations. There are four in total. Very cool stuff.
  • Nishiyama Daddy seems to have dropped off, but this account has been including him and his original crew in (I think somewhat sarcastic) "emote of the year" posts, calling Nishiyama the "greatest lock-in of our generation." I do think Nishiyama underestimated the chemistry he had with that team. They should get the band back together.