-Shop cute Japanese products and cool products from Japan. This cute blog is about Japanese kawaii, kawaii Japan, kawaii fashion, Japanese pop culture and more. It's a kawaii blog from Japan, Japan blog in English by a Japanese girl.

Kids love something kawaii. How cute is it that the baby girl asks her mom to sing this Japanese song for her.
As explained in the post some time ago, Aflac Japan has been going with kawaii strategy. They always keep creating new Manekinekoduck songs that grab our heart. (We know that because their commercials are always on TV.) The Japanese, regardless of kids or adults, just love something kawaii! I am amazed how well they have been doing business in Japan. They know us that we love something kawaii. They have melted our heart before they actually explain about their products.

So here it is, the Manekinekoduck kawaii exercise song for kids.

“manekinekoduck kodomo taisou”

Followings are lyrics in Romaji so you can sing it in Japanese without reading Japanese.

Neko mo ahiru mo minna isshoni sa~ manekinekoduck kodomo taisou!

Karada wo ugokasou kokoro wo ugokasou sa~ manekinekoduck kodomo taisou!

Meaning: A cat and a duck, and everyone else, let’s exercise all together! Move your body, move your mind, 1, 2, 3. 2, 2, 3 (the 2nd time around). 3, 2, 3 (the 3rd time around). 4, 2, 3 (the 4th time around) …

This post is especially dedicated to my friend Cath and her lovely daughter!
Also if you (any of the readers) have any request that you want me to post the lyrics of specific songs from Youtube, please feel free to contact me so I can write a post on that just like this!

How can I explain what comes after 教えて (oshiete) ? This was a question from one of my blog readers some time ago.
It was too difficult for me to answer from twitter, or a blogpost by text as usual. I found drawing something like a manga might be easier for me to get started. Also, it’s a good chance to play with the scanner I happened to get from someone just recently.

*Jenny in this story has nothing to do with the person who asked me this question.
*This story is fiction, I made it while I was drawing it.

I sometimes question myself if there’s any point that I have to make learning Japanese videos by myself when there are so many free videos and lessons available online. But at a moment I’m doing this as per request or when I think it’s easier than I explain by text. In other words, if you request that you want me to make such and such video about Japanese, I’ll do that for you by first come first served basis.

Today it’s about greetings in Japanese. For those who study intermediate or advanced Japanese, greetings sound too easy. But I’m trying to refer to the cultural background of why we say so. Well actually it can be said to any posts of this blog. For example, those who are not interested in fashion can also enjoy Tokyo Kawaii TV for example because it refers to something more than fashion. (Some of my blog readers try to watch it without reading my English summary in order to practice listening Japanese spoken at a natural speed, and then read my English summary for better understandings.)

Kotodama…Kotodama thoughts from wiki
We think this way. Speaking out “Ittekimasu” means that the kotodama protects that person, because he said itte (going) and kimasu (coming back safe and sound). Thus speaking ill of others or speaking out negative things will be harmful in terms of Kotodama thoughts.

Finally, I’m trying to modify Learn Japanese page. As a native Japanese speaker, what do you think I can offer to you in this blog? Answering questions from time to time is not very proactive. I want my “Learn Japanese” page as active as other pages such as Health and Beauty. But I cannot come up with the good questions myself because I never learned Japanese as a second language or a foreign language. It’s a mother language, I don’t know what you find hard or confused. Do you know what I mean? It’s just like that I am often confused in English especially between “a” or “the” or no article needed. Singular or plural, prepositions such as “on” or “in” and “in” or “at”, possessive pronoun such as “our” or “their” or nothing needed…^ ^; At first I was having hard time understanding be type of verb and other verbs. ^ ^;

Please help me improve my Learn Japanese page. Your comments under the comment section or opinions and suggestions from contact page are highly welcomed. Thank you for your participation.

hand = te (手)=>otete (おてて)
leg/foot =ashi (足、脚)=> anyo (あんよ)
tummy = onaka (おなか)=> ponpon (ぽんぽん)
dog = inu (犬) => wanwan (ワンワン)
sleep = neru・nemuru (寝る・眠る) => nenne (ねんね）

There are many kind of baby words, but my talking to Pi-chan is very limited because she’s only a dog.
If you are interested in more baby words in Japanese, there is a website like this (in Japanese).
They sound cute!

I happened to find some bilingual comics at a book store the other day.

I can see these comics are published for those who study English. Many of Japanese people are serious about learning English, but unfortunately it’s also true that many of us end up with failure and only the bitter experience remains. I like this way that is not very strict. It’s just a comic, just a manga. When I looked inside, everything was written both in English and Japanese. Thus they should be good for English speaking people who study Japanese.

My English at school when I first learned it was so terrible! It was such a bitter experience as I couldn’t understand the difference between “be” type of verb and “do” type of verb. I was sad, I wondered if there was anything in my life (except for math!) that I couldn’t understand at all no matter how many times I studied. Especially my Japanese grades were very good for a long time, I went panic. Now I think I was not the type of people who are good at studying from a textbook. It was when I started to listen to radio educational programs for beginner English that I finally got what my problems were! (lol) This experience changed my life. I started to like English classes as much as Japanese ones. I decided to go to the U.S college for 1 year exchange program when I graduated from high school. I would have given up if the radio didn’t work out for me either. Now I am thinking of learning 3rd language. Now my problem is how I can manage time for that. :p Manga looks good, but not for the beginner who don’t even know how to pronounce the words. ^ ^;

Looks like there are already various kind of English – Japanese bilingual comics available at amazon.co.jp. Have you tried any of them? Any recommends? (I personally don’t like Nodame Cantabile although it’s become so popular since it was on air in Japan and people were much influenced by classic music then. It was not only inside anime or manga, it’s become a movie.)

« Hide more