Buchi & Pichi

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EdX: Learn Japanese through lessons taught by Japan-based universities. Payment is optional, it gives more perks, but you can learn without doing this!

Just yet, I'm not quite back. But I am working heavily on it, and working on the direction we want to take everything. If that's all you'd like to know, awesome! I hope to see you all in the next month or so with everything working again.

If you'd like something a bit deeper, I've perhaps opened up a bit too much under the cut 😅

Apologies to everyone in advance, but I will be gone, and I'm not certain for how long. I have a lot going on (job change, issues with my diploma getting lost in my college, foster kittens, etc) and working on this is just a bit too much for me to handle. I don't know how long I'll be gone, but know I will keep working on things in the background - namely books and worksheets, and other things to add to the site.

My mental health has been at a bit of a low, and I'm choosing to value myself in a way that is a bit hard for me to do :') But I hope to see you all again soon, with some new fun things!

Meet our new (unexpected) foster baby:

I think you mean pink(ピンク/ぴんく) and orange(オレンジ/おれんじ)! When it comes to these colors, they are more commonly (in my experience) used as the English loan word, rather than the Japanese form.

All colors have a katakana English form. In the adjective section, I just put it as hiragana, to represent how it is spoken phonetically.

Kirby's vet visit went amazing. His infections have all been treated, and he is doing far better with his energy levels! He is acting like a happy, healthy kitten again, which we are all happy for.

His back leg may still need to be amputated, as the infection deteriorated his bones and he no longer has a joint in his leg. If he is able to stay walking on his paw, he'll be fine - but if he starts putting his weight somewhere more damaging, it will be amputated. We will be back to check in three weeks!

His cataracts are still there, though do not seem to be as severe. We will keep an eye on this, as he may not have central vision.

If you want more updates on Kirby, we have now made an Instagram for him! We will try and update it at least once a day, at least for a little while.

Thank you so, so much to everyone who sent anything at all, to help out with Kirby. Thanks to the generosity of you, I was able to take him to the vet to get him entirely checked out! His biggest and most pressing issue was taken care of nearly immediately, which was the abscess that needed to be drained and treated. It was in a bit of a tricky location, but we were able to get it taken care of.

He is on extremely heavy antibiotics for his age, because his lower leg is infected as well. The infection has likely spread to his bone, however, and we are extremely aware of the possibility that he may have to have that leg amputated. For now, we are relying on the antibiotics, in the hopes that he will be able to recover with all of his limbs.

He also has cataracts, which we aren't certain of the cause, but we are planning for possible routes with that. Again, we are going to wait until he is a bit bigger to assess that, and what paths we can take to keep it from getting worse or more severe.

Kirby had/has multiple infections, but the antibiotics seem to be helping him feel better with those.

Were it not for you, Kirby would have ended up the same way plenty of kittens do, when they have too many issues for one person to take care of. But we are keeping Kirby under constant watch, and we are working together to take care of him every second of the day.

First off, I would like to state that I am extremely sorry for doing this on this account, but this is an emergency.

Approximately two weeks ago, I received two foster kittens, who I love with all my heart. Tragically, one of them was not strong enough to make it. Her brother, affectionately named Kirby, has begun developing a sickness similar to hers, and needs to be taken to the vet today. He was taken a few days ago to the emergency vet, and received antibiotics, but he has a mass that needs to be drained.

I am unable to afford his expenses, as I have used up nearly every penny of my savings in keeping him healthy.

I am asking for donations in any size, in order to help with his treatment. Anything at all helps, and everyone who donates can receive something from me.

If you donate, send me a DM or an ask giving the name you donated with, as well as anything you may want designed. I am unable to ship things out as the costs are too high, but I will gladly make you any digital file you would like. I can make custom practice pages, digital lessons, etc.

Please help me save him, by donating through the link below.

Thank you so much for even taking the time to read this, as it means the world to me. I hope to be back to giving you guys fun lessons again soon, and I wish you all luck in your learning!

Kanji is a lot harder to learn than it first seems. It can be easy to want to take the approach of just going in and memorizing them by how they look, memorizing what they mean and the stroke order; however, this is a poor place to start.

Radicals need to be learned first. Think of radicals like puzzle pieces, that you can put together to read and write the rest of the kanji! If you are working on learning these, or already have, then you are on an amazing path and will succeed.

I will try and answer your question, but I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. I apologize for that.

Kanji can be written messily. It can be written so messily that parts can blur together. However, strokes must be accurate. Every stroke is identifiable, and every one is unique. Substituting one stroke for a simpler one is rarely worth it. For example, if I used the letter v instead of the letter u in words, while they do look similar, it would be extremely awkward and hard to read.

This kanji is made using the two parts 一 and 木. The strokes on the left and right side of 木 do need to curve slightly, as the radical shows. Try and copy the kanji and radicals as closely as possible - it does matter, as it is how it is written.

We have free handwriting practice sheets at the bottom of our download page, which should be able to help you with writing kanji as it gives you a guide. Focus heavily on stroke order, and making the strokes look as accurate as possible.

Also:

Using 'you' in Japanese is only really rude if you know the person's name, or have a different title to refer to them as. If this person has told you their name once, then it can seem rude to not know it, and it can be rude to use 'you' - so just apologize, if you have forgotten, and let them know you don't mean any disrespect.

If it is a stranger, it is fine to use 'you'. For example, if someone dropped their wallet and you grabbed it, using 'you' would be the correct path:

"これ わ あなた の さいふう です か?" "kore wa anata no saifuu desu ka?"

kore - this wa - lets us now the subject of the sentence; 'this' anata no saifuu - your wallet

You are most likely never going to need to ask someone for a name, as it is typically exchanged when meeting. However, if you have to ask, do not worry much about saying 'you'. It can be a bit too direct, so we suggest using o-namae wa, but other than that there is not much to worry about. For the most part, using 'you' is only rude when you could be using their name or a title, but are choosing not to.

New Pichi's proverbs! Yojijukugo is really cool, and there's lots of different sayings that can be written with four kanji. One you might recognize from English is "issekinichō," or: one - stone - two - bird!

Learn about counters here!

Second installment of Pichi's Proverbs! This one's a little more complicated to write out than the last.

We're happy to help as many people as we can! It'd be nice make language stuff available for free, not make a new language seem like this big, intimidating thing.

The first installment of Pichi's Proverbs, comics breaking down Japanese Proverbs! (Sidenote, if you haven't heard of dango, they're Japanese rice flour dumplings, typically without a filling but covered in sweet or savory toppings. Yum!)