For my first interview, I wanted to introduce the legendary Jim Rogers and ask him his thoughts on learning Mandarin Chinese and what it was like to relocate his family all the way from New York to Singapore. He was very generous to give a few minutes out of his busy schedule to answer some of my questions. Jim Rogers is an American investor and financial commentator now based in Singapore. He wa...

There’s now a new way to watch Japanese TV shows if you’re not in Japan. I recently heard about this thing called jibtv from TokyoCooney (check out his YouTube channel) and thought it would be a good thing to share. You can tune in to the jibtv streaming internet channel to watch a variety of Japanese programs. They have a pretty wide variety of shows that are educational and enterta...

As much as you might enjoy reviewing your SRS flashcards, watching foreign movies, reading your foreign language books, or whatever you do to learn Chinese and/or Japanese (or any language for that matter), you can’t learn it all on your own. You need some friends to help you. In theory you could learn everything on your own, I think, but you’re just making life harder for yourself that way. R...

It’s said that there are about 50,000 kanji in existence. Thank god we only need to know a thousand or two of those! Does that make you feel any better? Probably not. Learning the kanji is the hardest part about Japanese. I think it’s even more difficult than learning them for Chinese since Japanese places multiple pronunciations on each character. It’s like twice or three times ...

“Nanjing! Nanjing!”, also known as “City of Life and Death”, is a new Chinese film by director Lu Chuan depicting the battle of Nanjing during the Second Sino-Japanese War. This battle is commonly referred to as “The Rape of Nanking” or the “Nanking Massacre”. Synopsis City of Life and Death takes place in 1937, during the height of the Second Sino-...

Look into Gordons eyes and see his confidence glare! Wafangdian English Language Super School might be silly but we have to start somewhere. That’s kind of how I feel about my blog. I’m not an authority on learning Chinese or Japanese, but I am confident that I can still help people a lot. And for everyone who is learning, remember to stay confident. That will help you with anything yo...

Everyone learning Japanese and Chinese should watch more cartoons and TV dramas! Normally I would never suggest that to anybody, since the first thing that comes to mind are pea-brain couch potatoes watching soaps, but we’re trying to learn some difficult languages here! Also, I’m talking about some quality programs. Some good Chinese & Japanese anime, movies, and dramas. You can ...

For everyone who’s been reading this new blog of mine, thank you! Especially those who’ve subscribed to my feed. Things have been a bit slow lately since I’m in the middle of taking final exams now, but lately I’ve been brainstorming for a lot of great content for the site. I’m going to be updating the site layout and graphics within the next few weeks, and I have pla...

This is the first of many book reviews I’ll do in the My Zousho series. Zousho (蔵書、ぞうしょ) means library or book collection. I’m going to take you through every book in my library that I’ve used to learn Japanese. I think these books will give you some good ideas and direction for learning. If you follow my path for learning Japanese you will definitely learn a lot in a short...

This is a list of things I think are either necessary or very helpful to bring with you if you study abroad in China. I’ve learned to always pack light for a trip, so I’ve tried to stick to more of the essentials in this list. If you’re only going for a short time then you might not want to take everything on this list, but that depends. If you stay for a long time then you can just buy a lo...