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Join Us Online for the First Edition of “Insights”!
We are thrilled to announce the first edition of a series of events organized by TUJ Continuing Education and Kokoro Media! “Insights: Learning from Some of Japan’s Most Inspirational People” will invite inspirational people of Japan to share their professional expertise and private experience on a broad range of topics. After sharing their insights with us,…
What Will Change in Japan in 2022
As the Japanese fiscal year comes to an end, now is a good time to review some changes that will affect Japanese society in 2022. ※This article was available as an early release in the Kokoro Media Newsletter. Click here to subscribe. The Change of the Age of the Majority in Japan The most important…
Is Willpower Now the Most Important Trait for Achieving Japanese Literacy?
When I moved to Tokyo in 2009, learning Japanese was an entirely different experience than what we know today. Electronic dictionaries were more common than smartphone apps. Digital flashcards had yet to go mainstream, so tangible ones, homemade or prepackaged, were the primary way to learn kanji characters. Before the prevalence of handwriting recognition and…
The Truth about Eshima Ohashi
You may have seen pictures of the Eshima Ohashi Grand Bridge online without knowing where it was, or if it was fake. Here is a short summary of facts and the truth about this mysterious-looking bridge. What is the Eshima Ohashi Grand Bridge? The Eshima Ohashi Grand Bridge is a bridge in Japan built over…
Looking Back on 2021 as a Foreign Resident in Japan
It’s February 2022 and Japan is in the midst of its sixth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, with much of the country under a quasi-state of emergency. Foreign tourists and new long-term residents remain barred from entering the country. Initiatives that could have propelled the economy even after the pandemic, such as remote work, have…
Seeing Kanji as Color: Japanese in the Mind of a Synesthete
My mind is perhaps more colorful than yours–and I mean that in an objective sense. I have synesthesia, a condition in which one sense is stimulated automatically with another. These can come in all sorts of interesting jumbles: for me, I see color in the back of my mind with words and music, but I…
Conduct a Personal SWOT Analysis to Study Japanese More Efficiently
Long-time Kokoro Media readers know that I like to apply various frameworks to the process of studying Japanese. I especially enjoy importing concepts from the business world to do this, and in this article, I’ll explain how you can apply the SWOT framework to your Japanese studies. Read on to learn what a SWOT analysis…
How to Lower the Language Barrier When Visiting Clinics and Hospitals in Japan
As a wannabe athlete, my mind often has greater physical fitness ambitions than my body can handle. This means that I find myself visiting medical professionals in Japan more often than one might expect. Having to explain basic symptoms in Japanese usually isn’t an issue. However, more complex maladies, such as nebulous “overuse” injuries, require…
3 Video Games That Can Actually Help You Learn Japanese
Ever since I started studying Japanese over a decade ago, I often heard that playing video games in Japanese was an effective way to study the language. As appealing as that sounded, this advice rarely worked for me because: The language and narratives in the games I enjoyed were always too complicated for my Japanese…