Asahi: After more than a century of forced assimilation and discrimination, the Ainu people were finally recognized as indigenous under legislation enacted in May 2019. But [Finance Minister Taro Aso] apparently forgot about that legislation when he gave a speech at a Jan. 13 meeting with his supporters in his electoral turf of Nogata, Fukuoka Prefecture. “There is no other nation but (Japan) where a single race has spoken a single language at a single location and maintained a single dynasty with a single emperor for over 2,000 years,” said Aso, who is also deputy prime minister. “It is a great nation.” “If my remarks caused a misunderstanding, I apologize and will correct them” Aso said after a Cabinet meeting in Tokyo. [On Jan. 14 he] sort of apologized: “I have no intention of denying the government’s policy.”

COMMENT: Now, watching an LDP dinosaur making statements like this (yet keeps getting re-elected) is frustrating as hell. But a) it’s refreshing that he “sort of apologized” (we’ve had plenty of these fossilized statements in the past not even getting that much, or even being doubled-down upon by bonafide bigots who nevertheless get re-elected); and b) we have official policy enacted last year (as noted in my annual JT Top Ten Human Rights List for 2019) that has declared the Ainu an indigenous people, meaning Japan is officially multiethnic. Even Asole himself wasn’t going to (officially) contradict that. Good news, sort of. …continue reading

    

Gone forever – Top 10 abandoned place in Japan you won’t be able to explore anymore! …continue reading

    

Ever walked into a building in Japan and wonder what the hell happened? We know we have.

This carpet design is so messed-up, it can only be intentional.

A bad floor or stair pattern can easily play tricks on our minds, altering how we perceive distance and where to walk. Alas, architects and interior designers’ all too often prioritize looks over practicality.

Among all the designs you could pick for your new building, stealthy camouflage patterns are probably the absolute worst. Unless you intentionally want people to feel like they’re about to fall down the stairs.

こういう階段作る奴全員捻挫してほしい。 pic.twitter.com/8VilDdbqRk

— 私 (@pity_honeymoon) December 29, 2019

こういう階段（かいだん）作（つく）る奴（やつ）全員（ぜんいん）捻挫（ねんざ）してほしい。= I’d like the people who built this staircase to sprain their ankles.

While we don’t condone violence, we can certainly sympathize with the sentiment.

How to express you’d like someone to do something in Japanese

Learning how to express that you’d like “to do something” is easy. You simply add the suffix たい to a verb stem and voila. (Note that たい acts like an い-adjective).

• I want to study Japanese in Japan. = 日本（にほん）で日本語（にほんご）を勉強（べんきょう）したいです。

But since the suffix たい expresses your desire to do something yourself, you can’t really employ this form when you want someone else to do the action. Instead, you’ll use a particular expression built with 欲（ほ）しい.

欲しい is an い-adjective which translates to “to want.”

• I want a Japanese textbook = 日本語の教科書（きょうかしょ）が欲しいです。

So, to say you want someone (a doer) to do an action, you’ll use the expression して欲しい. To be more precise, the sentence would look as follows:

• (私（わたし）は)* doer に verb て欲しい (です).

*In Japanese, the subject is often omitted.

I want my parents to buy a Japanese textbook = 両親（りょうしん）に日本語の教科書を買（か）って欲しいです。

Vocabulary

For more on learning Japanese

…continue reading