tokidokitokyo

[tokidokitokyo]

If you're learning Japanese, please consider using Polygloss!

Polygloss is an app that lets you practice writing in your target language every day. You play a game where you can see 4 different pictures, like this:

And you choose one of the pictures to describe and write a hint. Your hint gets sent to another user along with the same set of pictures, and the user will guess which of the 4 you were describing.

There seem to be few users learning Japanese on the app, so I play with the same people basically every day. Please join us!!

[tokidokitokyo]

Vocab list of the day: Geopolitics

政府 (せいふ) - Government

国民 (こくみん) - Nationwide

首都 (しゅと) - Capitol

外国 (がいこく) - Foreign country

国境 (こっきょう) - Border

大使館 (たいしかん) - Embassy

政治 (せいじ) - Politics

法律 (ほうりつ) - Law

戦争 (せんそう) - War

平和 (へいわ) - Peace

会議 (かいぎ) - Meeting; conference; session; assembly; council; convention; congress

問題 (もんだい) - Problem (e.g. societal, political); question; issue; subject (e.g. of research); case; matter

関係 (かんけい) - Relation; relationship; connection

文化 (ぶんか) - Culture

歴史 (れきし) - History

国際 (こくさい) - International

協力 (きょうりょく) - Cooperation; collaboration; help; support

大統領 (だいとうりょう) - President (of a country)

首相 (しゅしょう) - Prime minister; chancellor (Germany, Austria, etc.); premier

外交官 (がいこうかん) - Diplomat

軍隊 (ぐんたい) - Armed forces; military; troops

経済 (けいざい) - Economy; economics

輸出 (ゆしゅつ) - Export; exportation

輸入 (ゆにゅう) - Import; importation

貿易 (ぼうえき) - (Foreign) trade; (international) commerce; importing and exporting

[tokidokitokyo]

悪口

わるぐち

(verbal) abuse; speaking ill of people; bad-mouthing; name-calling; slander; abusive language; insulting remarks

他人の悪口を言うな。 たにん の わるぐち を いう な。 Don't speak ill of others.

[tokidokitokyo]

An overly detailed look into a day in

My Life as a Language Student Living in Japan

Plenty of people post about moving to a country where their target language is spoken, whether that's for work, school, or they started learning the language because of moving there, but I haven't seen people post specifically about attending language school, so I thought I could post about my own experiences. And because of my personality, the best way I thought of doing this was taking you along with me to see a day in my life- from start to finish.

Every (weekday) morning I wake up at 7 am though I don't get out of bed until 7:30. This gives me until 8:30 to eat a breakfast of very simple oatmeal and some tea. I am very much not a morning person. Even though there are train stations very close to both my apartment and my school, it's only about a thirty minute walk so I never actually take them. I usually arrive at school between 9:00-9:05.

Classes start at 9:15 and we start every morning with pronunciation practice. We listen to a recording of three sentences which are the same except for a slight difference, and then write the pitch accents for each sentence. For example, these were our three sentences today: かぎがみつかりません。かにがみつかりません。かいがみつかりません。After checking what we've written and the pitch accent, we practice saying the sentences aloud. This is something that I was shocked that we did when I first started school, but quickly realized why once I heard the other students do it. Sorry.

After pronunciation is kanji. Today we had a test; each test covers one chapter in the 漢字マスター textbook (my class is currently on the N3 textbook) and we have about one test a week. After the test, we still do our normal kanji study of 4-6 characters daily, where we go through the meanings and readings of the day's assigned characters. Then, we break out into small groups to write sentences using the day's characters. Our homework is to do the next day's kanji, but I'm such a good student that I just do it while we're going over that day's kanji so that I don't have to do it at home...

Next, we prepared for and had mini debates. Our prompt was 「ハッピーエンドじゃない昔話を子どもに読ませてもいいか、読ませない方がいいか」。Our stances were assigned to us, so I had to prepare an argument for why children shouldn't be read stories with unhappy endings, regardless of my own opinion. I do think that doing it that way is better for language acquisition, though. These debates were also done in small groups, so we didn't have to think up and explain our reasoning solely by ourselves.

休憩時間。We have a 15 minute break every day between the first and second half of class.

After break, we started writing essays on the same prompt as the debate. This time, though, we could choose our stance. We had the rest of class to write them, and then what you didn't finish was homework. Of course, we are expected to use the grammar that we learned over the course of this chapter in the essay. My school ends at 12:30, so I'm usually home by 1 pm.

On my way home from school, I stopped by my favorite bakery to pick up some bread. And because I've been out of bread for like a week, I really wanted honey toast, so I made myself some before warming up my lunch, which was just leftover somen soup. My kitchen is so small that I'm pretty much limited to only making very simple dishes. I only have a single burner and no counter space at all, so I end up eating a lot of soups (I could live off of nothing but soup).

After lunch, I finished writing my essay. I'm usually a procrastinator, but I wanted to get this out of the way because I had an evening meetup. Once I was finished with my essay, I didn't have time to go do the main thing I planned on doing this day before I knew I would have to write an essay (which is deal with the last piece [hopefully] of bureaucracy that comes with moving to a foreign country), so I vacuumed my apartment instead. Even though I never wear shoes in my apartment, it's so small that it still needs to be vacuumed about once a week. Wearing shoes in the apartment isn't against my lease, but it is against my friend's lease, so that might be something to keep in mind if you're considering moving to Japan long term.

I had about an hour and a half before I had to leave again, so I pulled out the manga 摩耶の葬列 and read some of that for about an hour. I started it during the break at school, and it's really interesting so far. Then, I had dinner and watched an episode of おにいさまへ。Can you guess what I had for dinner? Yeah, it was somen.

Then, I went to a Japanese meetup! There are lots of language exchanges around, but most of them are dominated by people wanting to learn English and people who speak little to no Japanese, so this meetup is one of the only ones I've found where people actually speak Japanese. It's only about 20 minutes walk from me. During the 自己紹介 section, a Japanese person told me that my demeanor was very Japanese and even asked if they taught us that in school (they didn't, I guess that's just what immersion does to a person). The meetup is only two hours long, but I usually stay for about an hour afterwards chatting with people.

Then, I got ready for the next day and went to bed. So that's a day in the life of a Japanese language school student! I feel like I don't usually do so much in one day, but I do like to get out of my apartment often and things are so close that I have the option to walk to many places. In case you're wondering, I took over 11,000 steps this day.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me and I'll do my best to answer!

[tokidokitokyo]

Okay, poll time. How many languages do you have a smattering of? This includes everything from fluency all the way down to knowing just a word or two.

(Proper nouns and adopted words don’t count.)

[tokidokitokyo]

Day 1 / 90

challenge: 90 day vocab challenge

i have not been reviewing the vocab i learned from the textbook im using and so im using a few days to build my foundation from there. the textbook im using is japanese for busy people (older edition). im forming sentences with the vocab listed. do correct me on my sentences if there's any errors.

source: japanese for busy people chp 1 and 2

銀行 [ぎんきょう] bank 秘書 [ひしょ] secretary 名刺 [めいし] business card (lit. name card)

sentence: こちらは銀行の林さんの秘書、田中さんです。これは彼女の名刺。

どなた who (more polite than 誰) 会社「かいしゃ」 company 電機／電器 [でんき] electricity/electrics/appliances

sentence: あれの人はどなたですか。電機会社のスミスさんです。

家 [うち] home 住所 [じゅうしょ] address 新聞 [しんぶん] newspaper 切手 [きって] letter stamps 鍵 [かぎ] key 学校 [がっこう] school

sentence: すみません。これは家の住所です。学校のではありません。あそこに切手と鍵と新聞あります。

[tokidokitokyo]

More kanji that are giving me a hard time

Get ready for more dumb mnemonics as we look at 賛, 替, 換 and 変.

So firstly we have 賛 and 替, which look similar but have different meaning and different readings and I frequently mix them up.

1) 賛

On: サン Kun: たた.える

Meaning: approve, praise, title or inscription on picture, assist, agree with

This one features 夫 (husband) x2 and also 貝 (shellfish, which also features in a lot of money-related kanji). So I guess in shellfish society they approve of gay marriage and praise two-husband couples, or something. Very progressive shellfish!

Some vocab (not that much I need to worry about at my level):

賛成（さんせい）approval, agreement, support, favour (yes, the shellfish husbands approve of and support whatever it is that's been decided)

賛美（さんび）praise, glorification, extolment (welllllll 美 = beauty, which contain the radical for sheep, so... shellfish husbands praise and glorify the beautiful sheep)

2) 替

On: タイ Kun: か.える、か.え-、か.わる

Meaning: exchange, spare, substitute, per-

This one also features two husbands, but this time the radical is 曰 (say - NOT 日 which is day. What the fuck. Fuck you Japanese). So in this instance, we have two husbands exchanging information (and also money (SPARE change), despite the fact the shellfish radical does not appear in this one, which is what REALLY FUCKING THROWS ME. Guess they're fucking gossiping while they do it and that's why 曰 is there)

Some vocab:

交替（こうたい）alternation, change, relief, relay, shift, substitution (sports), taking turns. (I guess these chatty bastards alternate taking turns in the conversation, shifting from one husband back to the other)

着替え（きがえ）changing clothes, change of clothes (yeah I can imagine these boys saying like "oooh don't YOU look nice" whenever one of them changes outfit)

替える（かえる）to replace, to convert, to change; to exchange, to interchange, to renew (fuck idk, maybe all that gossiping made them want to exchange their husbands for new ones)

取り替え（とりかえ）to exchange, to swap, to barter; to replace, to substitute (yeah as above)

^The above is all well and good until we move onto... 換! Which has more or less the same meaning and same kunyomi reading!

3) 換

On: カン Kun: か（わる）、か（える）

Meaning: interchange, period, change, convert, replace, renew

So you've got the radical for hand on the left, and then the right is clear/bright.

Some vocab:

乗り換える（のりかえる）to transfer (trains), to change (bus, train) (I guess you have to HAND your ticket to the conductor on the train? Idk)

交換（こうかん）exchange, interchange, switching (I guess if you're exchanging items you have to hand them over physically with your hands?)

換気（かんき）ventilation (so you're exchanging air for new air or something? I guess if you're ventilating the room by opening the windows and curtains then the room gets brighter. And you've gotta open the window with your hands. Idk man.)

換える（かえる）to replace, to convert, to change; to exchange, to interchange, to renew (same as 替える but a different kanji, idk why you'd use one over the other)

4) 変

On: ヘン Kun: か.わる、か.わり、か.える

Meaning: unusual, change, strange

So the two parts to this are 亦 (also, again) and the winter radical (夂), which also means late or delayed. Winter that's delayed again and again is pretty strange, right? It's a change from the normal order of things.

Some vocab:

変わる（かわる）to change, to be transformed, to be altered, to vary (winter is a season, season change and transform/alter the landscape)

変える（かえる）to change, to alter, to transform, to convert, to turn, to vary (I'm guesing this is the transitive form of 変わる)

相変わらず（あいかわらず）as usual, as always, as before, as ever, still (as always, winter comes along again)

[tokidokitokyo]

20250814　お坊さん繁忙期

シチュエーションの読みにくいポスター。

[tokidokitokyo]

今日のボキャブラリー（８月１１日）

Green/orange denotes pitch accent

縁（ふち）rim, brim, edge, brink

冷静（れいせい）calmness, composure, coolness, serenity, peace of mind

企業（きぎょう）enterprise, business, company, corporation

及ぼす（およぼす）

謎（なぞ）riddle, puzzle, enigma, mystery

占める（しめる）to occupy, to hold; to account for, to make up, to take up

基づく（もとづく）to be based (on), to be founded (on), to be grounded (on), to be in accordance (with)

芽（め）sprout, shoot, bud

満ちる（みちる）to fill, to become full (of), to be filled (with), to brim (with)

利口（りこう）clever, intelligent; well-behaved (esp. of children and pets), obedient, good

語る（かたる）to talk about, to speak of, to tell, to narrate

親戚（しんせき）relative, relation, kin

診察（しんさつ）medical examination, checkup, consultation

裁判（さいばん）trial, judgement, judgment

保証（ほしょう）guarantee, security, assurance, pledge; warranty

著者（ちょしゃ）author

逆らう（さからう）to go against, to oppose, to disobey, to defy

公平（こうへい）fairness, impartiality, justice, objectivity

[tokidokitokyo]

got this tip off reddit - generate a number between 1 & 1000, go to the question that matches the number here, and then write a page in your target language answering the question

[tokidokitokyo]

Photo by Talha Muhammad on Unsplash

2025年8月31日

July and August are over, and September is beginning. My personal life has been full of more downs than ups, and so now I will be clinging to the shreds of my sanity for the foreseeable future ^.^ But anyways, Japanese!

7月が終わり、8月が始まる。私生活がめちゃくちゃのでこれからは大変だと思いますが、それでも日本語を勉強しましょう！（^.^）

July & August Progress

July was at-home summer school with my son! Keeping up with studies in both Japanese and English, working on homework for Japanese school and kindergarten prep. We had a lot of fun but also got some learning in.

August was half at-home summer school and half figuring out the new logistics of my life, so my studying suffered.

General Goals:

ひらがな - ✅ reading, working on writing

カタカナ - 🔺 working on reading & writing

漢字 - ✅ working on reading

数字 - 🔺 working on numbers, counting, adding & subtracting

カレンダー - ✅ working on dates, days of the week, 昨日・今日・明日 etc.

Daily Goals:

カレンダー - ✅ read & say the date (especially irregular dates), read & say the day of the week, and write the date

ひらがな・カタカナプリント - ✅ practice writing either hiragana or katakana with a free online worksheet

音読 - ✅ practice reading aloud (picture books, flash cards, etc.)

教育動画 - ✅ watch a video/tv show/etc. that has some educational value (昔話、知識、科学、など)

Summer Goals:

読書 - ✅ read at least one book a day

名前を書けるようになる - ✅ my son's goal for his Japanese school is to write his full name in hiragana

英語 - 🔺 alphabet reading & writing, simple CVC words (flash cards, worksheets, picture books)

数学 - 🔺basic concepts of addition & subtraction

finish Japanese summer school homework

We studied most of the areas that I wanted to work on with him, with the only exceptions being writing katakana, writing the alphabet, and addition/subtraction. I think we have a good foundation for these, and as he progresses in school he will pick these up.

My son still prefers Japanese to English, but things are starting to balance out now that he has begun kindergarten. He used to tell me he couldn't speak English, but I think he has realized now that he can speak both Japanese and English, and in which situations to use one or the other.

September Goals

Continue with my son's studies in both English & Japanese.

Restart my own studies with a more regular schedule.

Read more.

Sleep more.

My goals are pretty ambiguous for September, but that's the only way I will keep my sanity! I hope to work back into a better routine when things start to settle down.

9月の勉強の目的は結構曖昧だけど、あんまり勉強する時間がなくて、詳しい目的はありません。いつか落ち着いたら、ちゃんとした勉強するルーティンを作ろうと思います。

[tokidokitokyo]

Piece of Asian media: *has a title that's obviously not in English*

Fan Translators: hmm taking into account the intention of the original and the rules of both languages, plus the tone of the story, the best title would probably be something like Adherent of the Blade of Duality, but probably an official translation would want to shorten it to Blade of Duality, or perhaps Double-Edged Sword to borrow a popular turn of phrase that also fits thematically--

Official English Translators: Master of Double-Penetration

[tokidokitokyo]

Illustration by 川上リョウ

[tokidokitokyo]

KYOTO, JAPAN

[tokidokitokyo]

分ける

わける

① to divide (into); to split (into); to part; to separate; to divide up; to classify; to sort out; to divide out​

② to share; to distribute; to deal out; to dish out​

③ to distinguish; to discriminate; to differentiate (between)​

④ to break up (a fight); to mediate​

⑤ to call a draw; to tie​

⑥ to push one's way through (a crowd)​

⑦ to sell​ (also written as 頒ける)

お弁当を弟に分けてあげなさい。 おべんとう を おとうと に わけて あげなさい。 Share your lunch with your younger brother.

[tokidokitokyo]

京都　圓光寺　🌸枝垂れ桜🌸

kyoto enkoji temple 🌸cherry blossoms🌸

[tokidokitokyo]

Kagurazaka Tokyo👫🌇 東京 神楽坂