Learn Japanese Today

Well….good luck. Reading the newspaper in Japan requires an absurdly high level of kanji-fluency, making it very difficult for foreigners to read it. This makes sense with the Japanese 鎖国 (sakoku) mindset. Sakoku refers to National isolation and the exclusion of foreigners. Japan was sakoku for many years, so a lot of Japanese beliefs and policies harken back to that mindset of everything being design For Japanese Only.

As a journalist myself, I think this is a problem. In the news world, we have a phrase that goes something like “don’t use a dollar word when a nickel word will do,” meaning that you should only use difficult words if they can’t be expressed in a simpler fashion. The way I think about it is this: writing “erudite” instead of “smart” doesn’t make you any more of either. Newspapers exist for the readers, not for the writers, and in a growingly international world, it’s a damn shame that you have to have a native level of fluency to read the paper.

A lot of you are probably thinking, what about papers that are translated into English like the Daily Yomiuri and the Mainichi Daily ? Well, as the Mainichi Daily scandal shows us, the news we get is not always the same as the news Japan gets. I know the WaiWai column is an extreme example, but Japan is also very sensitive and very proud, so the news we get that’s translated in Japan sometimes has a tendency to glorify Japan rather than being honest and critical like a good paper should.

Well, do you think you have what it takes? Here are some quizzes with the most common kanji compounds from newspapers. See how you do.

Other than that, I have a question for you all. How can Japan make its news more readily available to foreigners in an unbiased form? How can newspapers become more readible? Can a newspaper with fewer kanji and a lower vocabulary be successful?

Hey there, I know this isn’t a review, because well, frankly, I don’t have time to write one. But. I think this is something you guys should check out. This manga is called Eagle (イーグル）by Kaiji Kawaguchi, and it follows a Japanese news reporter who is covering a Japanese-American senator’s run for the presidency. It’s set in the timeframe of the 2000 presidential elections and features such characters as Bill Clydon (Clinton) and Al Noah (Gore). Especially if you’re familiar with American politics, this is a very interesting manga, and it has a lot to do with newspaper, which is the theme of the week.

I first read this in English, before my Japanese was good enough, but now I’m looking forward to reading it in Japanese. Unfortunately, I don’t know where to find it online. Can somebody help me?

Here’s a link to buy it in English. And you can find scattered volumes in Japanese here .

If you know any better place to obtain these, let me know.

Okay, so now the we don’t have to talk about scandal anymore, lets take a good look at this paper.

Ease of Use:5

Right now, there is no English site. So you’ll have to struggle through with Rikai or some other reading tool and see how you do. Generally it’s a lot like the Yomiuri in that the articles are very readable when you can get them in the right form, but the links can cause trouble. Also, when you click on a story off the front page, it only gives you the first paragraph and you have to click 続き読む (continue reading) to get to the full article. Not a big deal, but it gets annoying.  One thing it does have going for it is the fewer categories. On the Yomiuri, there’re definitely times when a story that’s both about the environment and national news can confuse you because you won’t know what tab to click on. At Mainichi, it’s just News Center, Entertainment & Sports, and Lifestyle. It’s a lot simpler.

Authenticity: 9.5

The sense I got is that the vocabulary for the newspaper is a little lower, and they tend to use more commonplace words. They also seem to have a bit more reader friendly topics for stories, while the Yomiuri seems more targeted to bureaucrats and the highly educated. If The Daily Yomiuri is “The New York Times,” then the Mainichi Daily is the “USA Today.”

Quantity of Knowledge: 8.5

There’s a lot of stuff on here, but it’s not quite as meticulous as The Daily Yomiuri. I personally don’t think this is that important though, because if you can read everything on the site, you probably don’t need my advice anymore anyway.

Price: 10

Can’t argue with that.

Fun: 7.5

Even with the WaiWai column gone, this is still a pretty interesting paper. It is still a credible newspaper, so it can’t all be fun and games, but I think it generally has some pretty interesting stuff going on.

Overall: 7.5

I’m giving the Daily Yomiuri the nod on this one because they have an English site up, which is pretty important for checking what you’ve learned. However, as soon as Mainichi is up in English in September, I’ll do a reevaluation, which I believe will be much more favorable. It seems the content on Mainichi is much more interesting and suited for learners than Yomiuri.

Also, Happy One-Month Anniversary to Learn Japanese Today! Thanks for all the support you guys, you keep me workin’.

• Japanese moms do fellation to her son of junior high school student to make him study.
• Japanese housewives do prostitution in the coin shower in suburbs.
• The nurse in Japan is lewder than the prostitute.
• 55% of the women in Japan sleep with men on the day at the first time of meet.
• Japanese teens are screwing (having sex) like rabbits on viagra.
• The latest Japanese fad: hiring 70-year-old prostitutes.
• Also pre-teen prostitutes are still finding work in Japan.
• Japanese high school girls no-panty, just for kicks (for fun).
• Fast food sends schoolgirls into sexual feeding frenzy.
• There is a bestiality restaurant in Tokyo

What do these bullet points have in common? They’re headlines from the infamous WaiWai column of Japan’s Mainichi Daily News. Essentially what this column did was extract articles from Japanese tabloids and porn magazines and present them as coming from reputable sources. They only did this for the English version of the column, and they were able to get away with it due to the relative obscurity of the source material. I mean, a Japanese person won’t really know the difference between The National Enquirer and The New Republic.

So all that has been going on for the past 8 years and it has just recently stopped. The Mainichi Daily has been cleansing its corruption and is scheduling for a fresh start in September. Read about it here .

The Daily Yomiuri is available in English and Japanese .

To read the Japanese version, I recommend utilizing Rikai.com’s reading tool .

Alright, I just had a long day at work, so I’m just gonna get right to it.

Ease of Use: 8

The big thing working against The Daily Yomiuri is that the articles aren’t directly linked to their translations on the English site. Delays for translation can be as brief as a weekend or as long as three days, so the way I usually go about is I find an article that looks interesting on the English web site. I read the headline, then I got try to find it on the Japanese site. The best way is to go under the respective section that best describes the story:　    社会 (society)、スポーツ(sports)、経済(business)、政治(politics), and hit CTRL+F and type in Japanese a name or a place from the English article. As far as I can tell, national Japan news is translated within an hour or so, while most other stuff is put up within a day or so.

For example, I just read a headline about a girl who stabbed her father to death in Kawaguchi. I then typed 川口 into my “Find” box after clicking on the 社会 tab, and found the Japanese story from three days ago. It’s a pretty interesting one, here’s the English article , the Japanese article , and the follow-up Japanese article that hasn’t been translated in yet in which it is discovered the young murderess had a collection of “occult manga.” And you though Deathnote was just for fun.

Note that all of these articles are already put through Rikai. I know. You’re welcome.

Authenticity:8

I’m inclined to say that you don’t get much more authentic than an actual Japanese newspaper, but you don’t just hand a third-grader an issue of the New York Times and expect him/her/it to just pick it up. And then how are you supposed to feel when your third-grader is struggling to use ‘ombudsman’ in a sentence. What’s that? You don’t know that one? Well…yeah, I just learned that today. We had the ombudsman from NPR give a talk to the newsroom staff today. It was awesome.

Back to the point, unless you’re at a level of reading fluency where you can comfortably read a Japanese newspaper, a lot of the vocabulary will be pretty advanced for you. However, these are the words and the kanji you need to know to read a newspaper, so you better learn them sometime. Not to toot my own journalism horn, but who do you think you are if you can’t even read the paper?

Quantity of Knowledge: 9.5

So I started reading this one article, about the regulations of the Ministry of Defense’s Ground Self-Defense Force and there was one word I knew in the first paragraph. This is just to let you know what your getting into. There are going to be a lot of proper nouns that you won’t even know in English, so if you’re just getting started, stick to the murdering kids.

There’s plenty of stuff out there to read though once you’re good enough.

Price: 10

Such a free website. So good.

Fun: 6

This can really depend on the article. I had a lot of fun reading about the murdering kid and her manga. Reading about the Ministry of Defense was like getting an anal probe. Read what you like.

Overall: 8.3

If you’re good enough to read these articles in Japanese without Rikai, then CONGRATULATIONS! Go start your own blog. For those of us that have to struggle, this is like one of those scholarly journals in the library. You never really feel like sitting back and cracking one open, but if you put in the hours you’ll really be rewarded.

Now that I’ve given you a great website reading tool via Rikai.com , why not take it for a spin?

Reading online Japanese newspapers as a great way to read Japanese that’s actually interesting, rather than those contrived yomimono from your textbook. And, as an added bonus, you get to learn more about Japan. And you love Japan!

Well, I have two online newspapers to recommend to you, and I’ll cover both of them more in-depth later in the week. I selected these two because they’re the two Japanese newspapers my linguistics professor at school really likes to read. I very much trust his opinion on Japan-related things (he’s spent years living there), so I’ve adopted them as the papers I read myself.

For real, up-to-date news, you gotta go for the Daily Yomiuri , one of Japan’s premier newspapers. It’s like the New York Times of Japan. Very good. Very interesting.

Then, if you like scandals and gossip, and I know I do, you should check out the Mainichi Daily . It’s like the National Enquirer of Japan. Not as good. Very Very Interesting.

Unfortunately, the Mainichi Daily has recently endured some breaches in its journalistic integrity, involving excessive lewdness and the kind of poor fact-checking made infamous by the Steven Glass debacle at the New Republic a couple years back. But that’s a story in and of itself, more for later this week.

Both of these newspapers have English websites too, so it’s cool to struggle your way through an article in Japanese, and then read it in English to see if you missed anything. Try not to jump back in forth while you’re reading. Work through to the end. You can do it. And if you don’t think you have time to read an article in Japanese, just read it in English and go back later. Hopefully you’ll still remember the gist of the article, but not the exact wording. This should make reading the Japanese article easier, but also very informative as you’ll know what kind of vocab to look for.

I officially declare this Shimbun Week. Be on the lookout for more articles about Japanese News. See ya.