This website started as a hobby to explain photography (posts listed here), but over time expanded to provide (hopefully) useful information about Japan and the Japanese language. I also run edonoyu.com with a friend—a site that covers onsen in the Tokyo region.
More and More
The structures introduced here lets us say things like “the cheaper the better” or “the higher you climb…
The Double Negative
ざる is another archaic form of the negative and 得ない can be used to mean “cannot do”. Put…
Constant States
Both っぱなし and ～まま are used to express a constant or continuous action or unchanging state or event.…
Covered in Something
When we want to say that something is covered in or full of something else (e.g. “the bookshelf…
Colloquial Japanese
One gripe among Japanese learners is that they learn all these verb conjugations and honorifics and then when…
Imperative Verbs
At the moment the only way we have to give an order is to ask politely for someone…
Honorifics in Japanese: A Complete Introduction to Keigo, Sonkeigo, and Kenjogo
Honorifics play a huge role in the Japanese language. They define underlying power dynamics and help the speaker…
Japanese Grammar: Causative-Passive Verbs
You’re probably thinking, “What the hell the causative-passive?” All I mean by this are verb structures that combine…
The Causative (させる)
The causative is used to express “make” or “let” someone do something”. In fact, we’ve already met one…
The Passive (される)
First of all, a quick reminder of what we mean by the passive. Present Passive to approve to…
Actions From & Towards
Here we introduce how to express actions from and towards someone or yourself, e.g. “I will have him…
Regret at an Action (てしまう)
We can use the te form with the group 1 verb しまう to express regret at an action.…
