This book, first published in 2000, is a guide to Japanese usage for intermediate students approaching the finer nuances of the language.

Groups together Japanese near-synonyms and provides clear information on their meaning and use, richly illustrated with authentic examples.

So you think you learned everything in Japanese class that you needed to know? Guess again. Chances are, your teachers only covered the G-rated side of the language. What about the rest of the vocabulary and phrases you need for this R-rated world? That's where Using Japanese Slang comes in. From college campuses to back-street bars, this book is a vital resource for understanding the phrases you can't learn from your Japanese friends because they'll just smile and say you're better off not knowing anyway. Using Japanese Slang brings you the entertaining and colorful Japanese language as it's used in the real world, offering fascinating etymological explanations as well. It will give you the power to express the thoughts you really want to convey, and deliver them like a native speaker.

Being a successful speaker of a given language involves control of the meaning and use of vocabulary items, taking in their lexical content (what phenomena they refer to), combinatorial behaviour (what items they occur with) and situational characteristics (e.g. as colloquial or formal terms). This essential reference book provides clear information on these aspects for around three hundred groups of Japanese near-synonyms, supplemented by a wide range of authentic examples. The result is a clear profile of the meaning and use of each item, highlighting similarities and distinctions among neighbouring terms and expanding learners' lexical range. The book is designed primarily for English-speaking learners, and the selection of groups and items and the overall treatment adopted reflects the author's extensive experience in teaching Japanese to English speakers. Japanese forms and examples appear in both romanisation and Japanese orthography, and the bilingual indexes allow readers to locate synonyms quickly and easily.

Using Japanese paper on digitally printing photos can yield tremendous results for photographers who are interested in experimenting with new methods. But beware: The common concept of how photographs should look will be challenged if you decide to use this technique. Carl-Evert Jonsson shares his experiences using the experimental technique in this book. After using Japanese papers (washi) for paintings and collages, he started to use the papers for his photos. This technique is not an alternative to classic film-based photography. Ink is injected from a cartridge in a printer connected to a computer then the image is reproduced on printable washi paper. Darkroom facilities are not needed. All you need is a computer, printer, washi, and photos. The liveliness of washi fibres gives a softer result, and washi is more absorbent than Western papers, with the ink appearing integrated rather than sitting on the printed surface. Find out how to use a method that will give new life to photos with the insights in this unique photography book.

The volumes in this series set out to provide a contemporary record of the spread and development of the English language in South, Southeast, and East Asia from both a linguistic and literary perspective. Each volume will reflect themes that cut across national boundaries, including the study of language policies; globalization and linguistic imperialism; English in the media; English in law, government and education; 'hybrid' Englishes; and the bilingual creativity manifested by the vibrant creative writing found in a swathe of Asian societies. This book gives an in-depth analysis of the use of the English language in modern Japan. It explores the many ramifications the Japanese-English language and culture contact situation has for not only Japanese themselves, but also others in the international community. Data for this book has been gathered using anthropological ethnographic fieldwork, augmented by archival sources, written materials, and items from popular culture and the mass media. An interdisciplinary approach, including those of anthropological linguistics, sociolinguistics, cognitive science and symbolic anthropology, is taken in the exploration of the topics here. This book's arguments focus on four major theoretical linguistic and social issues, namely the place of the Japanese-English case in the larger context of 'World Englishes'; the place of the Japanese-English case in a general theory of language and culture contact; how Japanese English informs problems of categorization, meaning construction and cognition; and what it says about the social construction of identity and sense of self, nationalism and race. This book will be of interest to linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, cognitive scientists, and all readers who are interested in language contact, sociolinguistics, English as an international language, and World Englishes. It will also appeal to those who are interested in Japan and popular culture.