Thoughts on the Underlying Structure of Language I have been busy in the last few weeks working on checking and editing the English translation of a book by LEX, that they are planning to publish in English in the coming year. This type of checking takes a lot of time, as a group of 5 or 6 people meet and read through the entire document line by line, checking the original Japanese against the translation to make sure the meaning that is conveyed in the translated version is as close as possible to the original. Some times a question about one line can lead to a half-hour discussion about the meaning or connotations of words or phrases in the different languages and the larger ideas that surround the sentence. Even though it takes a long time, I think it's really interesting work because it makes you think a lot about the subtleties of language. A lot of times there are words or phrases that cannot be directly translated or even that express ideas that don't really exis

Goodbye To My Second Host Family Yesterday I changed host families for the third time, which will be my last host family while I'm in Japan. I was really sad to leave my previous host family because I had just gotten to know them very well and really enjoyed staying with them, but before we were able to do a lot of things together before I left. My host sister Maron-chan and I went shopping in  Harajuku  together, which we had been planning to do for a long time since she likes going there, but hadn't found the time. The other day she had a day off from school though, so we were finally able to go. Harajuku is a trendy shopping area for young people and very Nihon-poi (Japanese taste). Maron-chan said that the best thing to eat there is tapioca juice (I've seen it called bubble tea in the U.S.), so one of our missions was to find it. My host mom joined us later and we went to a place with  プリクラ  ("puricura", a Japanese-icized version of Print Club), or pho