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Along the lines of
Phrase: Along the lines of It’s more common in North America to have a cabin in the forest or on a lake where you can spend the weekend than it is in Japan. Not everyone has a summer home, but many people do. As a child, many members of my extended family had cabins in…
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Join the club
Phrase: Join the club One of my first observations while living and working in Japan was that the Japanese love two things: clubs and awards. Almost every student in school is in a club. Some are in two or even three. There is a plethora of sports clubs, culture clubs for things such as calligraphy…
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Snake oil
Word of the Day: Snake oil You can’t blame anyone new to Japan for thinking Japanese love to take pills. It seems there’s an infomercial flogging a remedy for every ailment of the human body. It’s all snake oil if you ask me. Take a few turtles, kill’em, grind’em up, turn’em into powder and press’em…
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Not have a leg to stand on
Idiom: Not have a leg to stand on Please accept my apologies in advance, but I have to use good ol’ Trumpy again to illustrate today’s phrase. You see, Trumpy is huffing and puffing and trying to blow the election down (a reference to the nursery rhyme ‘the three little pigs.’), but he doesn’t have…
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Live the dream
Phrase: Live the dream Hey, how are you doing? Are you living the dream or what? If you are, then let me congratulate you on a life well lived. When you live the dream, you experience success and achieve everything you want to achieve. This especially applies to your career. The main problem with this…
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Vice versa
WotD: Vice versa Remember what I said on November 12th about Latin? No? Well, let me paraphrase for you. If you want your English to be more sophisticated, you need to know some standard Latin terms. Vice versa is another one of those that you should know. It means that if one thing is true…
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Bite the dust
Idiom: Bite the dust Here we are, nine months into a pandemic few of us saw coming and none of us want to be experiencing. It’s quite sad, but many businesses that were thriving this time last year have already bit the dust. They are gone, victims of an unfair natural phenomenon. Mostly it’s through…
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A breath of fresh air
Phrase: A breath of fresh air Hey, have you realized that today is Friday the thirteenth? It was an awful day on October 13, 1307, if you were a Templar Knight in France. However, we are not Templar Knights, 1307 has long passed, and we’re not going to talk about that right now. With all…
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Summa cum laude
WotD: Summa cum laude OK, boys and girls, it’s time to back to Latin class for Summa cum laude. If you want to speak a more sophisticated level of English, you need to know some commonly used Latin terms and abbreviations. No, you don’t need to speak Latin. However, when learning English, you learn a…
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Out of favour
Phrase: (Fall) out of favour It’s over! I’m sure the world breathed a sigh of relief the moment the victor of the American election was announced. It’s not so much that Trump fell out of favour but that we were all waiting on tenterhooks, and the tension was so thick you could cut it with…
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