STATUS UPDATES

In the past, when Japanese men proposed marriage, they used an abalone as a betrothal gift! How would you like to receive such a fishy offering?! Here's the word for that present:

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It seems like lots of us have experienced crazy weather lately, including tornadoes and quasi-typhoons. Where I live, we keep oscillating between turtleneck weather and shorts weather, with the occ...

Because kanji appeals to people around the world, there's a good chance you're not from the United States. If that's the case, you may not know how crazy things have become here politic...

Just about the only downside to all my kanji writing is that I have little human contact these days. I do find tremendous amounts of stimulation when I immerse myself in each character, but there...

A Facebook friend posted that he has gone running for 425 days straight, logging in a whopping 4,463 miles. In response, his Japanese friend wrote this comment:

素晴らしい継...

Nearly every time I start writing a kanji essay, I feel stuck, and I see no way out. I'm armed with a collection of compounds to cover, several of them fascinating in their own right. But when...

Last weekend my husband and I had a houseguest, an American who has lived in rural Japan for 20 years (in a valley filled with monkeys!).

I barely knew a...

A friend sent an email that contained a lovely word:

雨宿り (あまやどり: taking shelter from rain)...