Japanese English

The 1000 essential words. How to learn a language differently ? With our learning method : I listen, I repeat, I speak. We rely on pronunciation, oral rehearsal, listening, combined with words, essential phrases, and a vocabulary list. 20% of the words are used 80% of the time.

Japanese folklore is abundant with tales of ghostly creatures and the supernatural. In Haunted Japan, author Catrien Ross reveals the legends that have been passed down for generations and continue to terrify us today.

Every moment in our life happens only once, and if we let it slip away, we lose it forever - an idea captured by the Japanese phrase ichigo ichie (pronounced itchy-GO itchy-A). Often spoken in Japan when greeting someone or saying goodbye, to convey that the encounter is unique and special, it is a tenet of Zen Buddhism and is attributed to a 16th-century master of the Japanese tea ceremony, or "ceremony of attention", whose intricate rituals compel us to focus on the present moment.

Relax and find happiness amid the swirl of the modern world with this internationally best-selling guide to simplifying your life by a Japanese monk who embodies the wisdom of Zen.

In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat—and then for his wife as well—in a netherworld beneath the city’s placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is one of Haruki Murakami’s most acclaimed and beloved novels.

In a voice both haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri describes her life as a geisha. Taken from her home at the age of nine, she is sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. Witness her transformation as you enter a world where appearances are paramount, virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder, women beguile powerful men, and love is scorned as illusion.

Listeners of this book will gain a clear understanding of what makes the Japanese, and their society, tick.

The fates of two women, one American, one Japanese, become entwined in this sweeping novel of 19th century Japan on the cusp of radical change and Westernization. The Japanese tea ceremony, steeped in ritual, is at the heart of this story of an American girl adopted by Kyoto's most important tea master and raised as attendant and surrogate younger sister to his privileged daughter, Yukako.

Makoto Saigo is half-American and half-Japanese in small-town Japan with a set of talents limited to playing guitar and picking fights. With rock stardom off the table, he turns toward the only place where you can start from the bottom and move up through sheer merit, loyalty, and brute force―the yakuza. Saigo, nicknamed “The Tsunami”, quickly realizes that even within the organization, opinions are as varied as they come, and a clash of philosophies can quickly become deadly. One screw-up can cost you your life, or at least a finger.

This collection of Japanese poetry was compiled and translated into English from an anthology known as The Collection of Myriad Leaves, and from a number of other anthologies made by imperial decree between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. This period has come to be considered the golden age of Japanese literature. These examples of Japanese poetry exhibit the most exquisite polish, allied with an avoidance of every shocking or perturbing theme; they combine the enduring luster of a precious metal with the tenuity of gold-leaf.

Hawaii, 1941. War clouds with Japan are gathering and the islands of Hawaii have become battlegrounds of spies, intelligence agents, and military officials - with the island's residents caught between them. Toiling in the shadows are Douglas Wada, the only Japanese American agent in naval intelligence, and Takeo Yoshikawa, a Japanese spy sent to Pearl Harbor to gather information on the U.S. fleet.

In 1939, as Poland falls under the shadow of the Nazis, young Alma Belasco's parents send her away to live in safety with an aunt and uncle in their opulent mansion in San Francisco. There, as the rest of the world goes to war, she encounters Ichimei Fukuda, the quiet and gentle son of the family's Japanese gardener. Unnoticed by those around them, a tender love affair begins to blossom. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the two are cruelly pulled apart.

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Nikki is a horror novelist. Her choice of career is dictated by an obsessive compulsive disorder that forces her to write stories of death and destruction. She can't control it, doesn't understand it, but can use it to make money anywhere in the world. Currently "anywhere" is in Japan, hiding from her mother who sees Nikki's OCD as proof she's mentally unstable. Nikki's fragile peace starts to fall apart when the police arrest her for the murder of an American expatriate. Someone killed him with a blender.

Welcome to ikigai, a Japanese mind-set that will change your life. Ken Mogi, a Japanese expert and best-selling writer, reveals all about this mysterious and fascinating miracle that is at the heart of Japan's record-breaking long life, astonishing appreciation of sensory beauty and inherent mindfulness. It is extraordinary that Japanese men's longevity ranks fourth in the world while Japanese women's ranks second. But perhaps this comes as no surprise....

When Toru Narazaki's girlfriend, Ryoko, disappears, he tries to track her down, despite the warnings of a private detective he's hired to find her. Ryoko's past is shrouded in mystery, but the one concrete clue leads him to a compound in the heart of Tokyo, with a group that seems to be a cult led by a charismatic guru. Narazaki plunges into the secretive world of the cult, ready to expose himself to any of the guru's brainwashing tactics if it means he can learn the truth about Ryoko. But the cult isn't what he expected, and he has no idea of the bubbling violence beneath its surface.

Written over three centuries ago by a Samurai warrior, A Book of Five Rings has been hailed as a limitless source of psychological insight for businessmen or anyone who relies on strategy and tactics to outwit the competition.

Eleven-year-old Japanese American Owen has been in Japan for his sixth-grade year. By March he finally feels like he's getting the hang of the new culture, making friends at school, and feeling at home with the "weird" food. But early one morning, everything changes - and Owen suddenly finds himself just trying to survive one of history's most devastating disasters.

The mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II is not only a tale of injustice; it is a moving story of faith. In this pathbreaking account, Duncan Ryuken Williams reveals how, even as they were stripped of their homes and imprisoned in camps, Japanese American Buddhists launched one of the most inspiring defenses of religious freedom in our nation's history, insisting that they could be both Buddhist and American.

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