A fresh start.

Dear fellow language learners,

It’s been a while since I posted my regular snippets.
To be honest, I lost a sense of inspiration along the way of creating the now over 350 posts here.

Despite my low posting frequency, the number of people subscribed has grown to 5192 at the time this message reaches you. I still cannot believe that this platform, which I started during the pandemic as a learning tool for my own students back when I was still teaching at university, has grown into this amazing community of people from over 70 countries that share a passion for Japanese language and literature. Many thanks to all of you for sticking with me, actively or passively, here and/or on YouTube, over the past years.

As I don’t want this to turn into a newsletter that only serves to promote my classes - although I will still notify you of those as well (and to get the shameless self-promotion out of the way: there are still 2 spots available in my group session in the upcoming semester starting later this month, and 2 spots in the one-time Verbs Masterclass on November 24th) - I want to give a new direction to the newsletter.

If you’ve followed me for a while, especially on Instagram, you might know that one of my passions is photography (especially when in Japan). Going forward, I want to combine the usual snippets with the pictures I take. I’ll quote from passages that are directly related to an image, or that I’m loosely reminded of in a given scene. As I am currently on a trip in Japan - partially with my dear friend who encouraged me to promote this newsletter on Reddit way back - I felt this is the perfect time to try something new. I’m not sure how frequently I’ll post (I suppose this is also dependent on your reactions) but the posts will be denser than before. It’ll be a fresh beginning for the way I engage with you on this platform, fusing my various passions together while hopefully inspiring you to read and feel more connected to the content I create.

Just to test the waters, here’s a picture and a snippet. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Enjoy!

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From 村田沙耶香『コンビニ人間』

店内に散らばっている無数の音たちから情報を拾いながら、私の身体は納品されたばかりのおにぎりを並べている。

• 店内　　　てんない　　　　in the store

  • You see these suffixes such as 内, 中, 外 a lot. For example, 車中　しゃちゅう is the same as 車の中　くるまのなか. 予想外　よそうがい is the same as 予想の外　よそうのほか. In the same way, 店内 simply means 店の内　みせのうち (‘within the store’).

• 無数　　　むすう　　　　　countless

  • 無 is strictly speaking 無い　ない (‘to not exist’), whereas 未　み or 未だに　いまだに means ‘not yet’. 非　ひ is a bit more tricky as it means something similar to ではない (you can see this the word 非人 which breaks down as 人に非ず　ひとにあらず or a ‘non-person’), but is often also used to indicate something that should be there is lacking (think of 非常識　ひじょうしき). 不　ふ is more of a simple, multipurpose negative prefix.

• 身体　　　からだ　　　　　body

• 納品する　のうひんする　　to deliver (goods to a store)

• 並べる　　ならべる　　　　to place in a row

  • 並べる is a transative verb (because there is an object here). The intransative form is 並ぶ　ならぶ.

Translation:

As I pick up information from the countless sounds scattered within the store, my body neatly arranges the onigiri that were just delivered.