The Nine Lives – Ian Cheung, Information Architect in Osaka, Japan

I’m going to make another concerted effort at improving my Japanese. Japanese is tough, I was going write a few posts on why it is so hard but this humourous (but strangely accurate) essay seems to cover most of what I was to say. This time I will tackle the problem in different and simultaneous [...]

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I came across this article when I was searching for info on Kujo. Ah! it is now clear why my students used to get confused when they came across the word downtown. (click on the word downtown for the English definition). In Japanese there is a word “shitamachi” (下町)which if literally translated is down-town, but [...]

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