Riddles in Japanese, nazo nazo なぞなぞ, are similar to riddles in English. Often, they are just a play on words. Despite the cultural differences, Japanese seems to take it to the next level with more double meanings and homophones. After spending time with them, I found that the children’s riddles are rather lovingly adorable. Here they are, with dialogue transcripts I had with a Japanese friend.

When studying with a Japanese partner online, corrections may be received in different formats. It may be difficult to distinguish corrections and mistakes, or to format the corrections to be easy to read. Here are a few issues I have encountered, and ways to fix them.

It can be difficult to find reasonly priced sources for good quality anime with original Japanese voices and subtitles. Amazon was my first option, where I had looked to order Youkai watch (妖怪ウォッチ) from Japan. However, none of the product pages seemed to have the episode count visible, but the run-time was visible. From this, there appeared to be about 24 episodes in each box. Quickly, I realized this would be between $40-$60 USD. Quite expensive! The preowned options were cheaper at around $25 USD, however, this relies on trusting the quality of discs. Thankfully, the sellers listed every defect of the disc, packaging, and missing additions. Even so, with the shipping costs included, this would easily become about $40 USD or more. For this reason, I decided to try the Malaysian versions found on Ebay for $20 USD, with 76 episodes, included with free shipping. This is my review.

Dictionaries differ in definitions and presentation, and may cause confusion if not used correctly. A definition can only capture the interpretation of those who wrote it, and may not encompass all usable meanings or contexts. If you do not know another Asian language already, then how to express concepts and use words in Japanese will be much more different. It will take time to encounter and understand these differences. As such, dictionaries can only be used as a guide.