DigitalAudio

This is one of my all time favourite tracks. It's just brilliant.

I've found that any time I'm interested in a game, looking up let's plays in Japanese has helped me make a lot of connections between the game's contents and Japanese vocabulary.

I'm linking a good example of that with Metroid Dread, which is a game I played last year and I spend a few weeks watching let's plays and reading online content about it in Japanese, mostly because I loved the game, but I also thought that doing so might be a good exercise for intermediate learners as well.

The key to searching for a let's play is to just enter the Japanese name of the game (for example: バイオハザード４ or ダークソウル３）and then adding 実況 which is the keyword here. Any popular game followed by 実況 is likely to yield tons of results, so give it a try if you're into games, and you may learn a lot of vocabulary from it!

Hello everyone, and welcome to our (kind of) daily JLPT thread! I'm sorry I couldn't post one of these for the past week. I was busy with work and couldn't get the time to prepare an entire review of a new structure. I'm back and hopefully will be posting these more regularly again. With that said, let's get started!

本日の文法：JLPTN3の「～（という）わけではない」

～わけではない Is a pretty common expression that you're going to find in a lot of media such as anime, manga, manzai and dramas. It's also used in everyday conversation, though, so you will get a lot of mileage out of this one.

For the most part, its meaning is close to "it's not like..." or "...doesn't mean that...", so basically, it's an expression for a partial negation of a statement. You'd use it when you don't want to fully deny something, but still want to point out that something isn't quite correct.

So a few example sentences would be

お金があるから、必ず幸せにるというわけではない。"Having money doesn't necessarily mean you will be happy."

成績が良かったから、他の生徒に教えるのが得意なわけではない。"Having good grades doesn't mean you will be good at teaching other students"

So right now there are a few additional things you may be wondering:

First of all, what is という in this instance, and why is it optional? Is it really always optional or does it have a more nuanced use most of the time?

Generally speaking, where you can use a simple わけではない, you can also use a というわけではない. They're grammatically equivalent in that sense. However, they do have a very slightly different meaning, where という gives the impression that you're taking a less opinionated and more objective approach to the conversation. You would use というわけではない when you perhaps want to make a general statement. Looking at our first example sentence, you will notice that we're talking about a general perspective "money doesn't mean happiness in general", and as such, it doesn't feel like you're talking about anyone in particular, and you're just making a statement. But for our second sentence, you may notice the situation is most likely referring to a successful student that has decided to teach the rest of his class, and is probably not great at it. In this case, leaving out という makes the comment slightly harsher, almost like a criticism to a specific person in question.

So do keep those differences in mind.

Also, it's important to point out that わけではない is a rather stiff way to use this expression, and you may want to use わけではありません in formal contexts, or わけじゃない in more casual contexts. わけではない sounds a bit academic, kind of like the one speaking is a figure of authority. The type of speech you would find in textbooks, newspapers, academic research and similar scenarios.

Some examples for different settings would be

この道まっすぐ行ったら、すぐに図書館に到着するというわけではありません。その前、公園も渡らなければなりません。"You will not reach the library immediately if you walk straight down this road. You have to cross the park first as well."

いや、別に俺の妹が天才なわけじゃないけど、結構頭がいいし、頑張れる人間だから。"Nah, it's not like my sister is a genius or anything, but she's pretty smart, and she works hard."

The first example could be someone giving directions to another person, presumably a complete stranger. In this scenario, using full-on 敬語 would probably be overkill, but using a more informal form would come off as rude. This is why a polite form like this one might work.

The second example is far more informal, but you will also encounter a lot of this in every day life. I've personally found myself speaking to many of my co-workers like this in the office. Definitely not to my boss or other superiors, though, so watch out for that.

I think that will be all for today! Hope everyone is having a nice day, getting ready for JLPT in only 12 days!

I sort of created a system where the tiny bag in the front will contain my personal stuff like phone charger, water bottle, wallet, earphones, etc.

The first bag in the back contains the tech stuff like laptop, audio interface, and microphones (if any), and the larger bag contains the heavy lifting stuff like the cables, smaller table mic stands I can fit inside it, duct tape, scissors, AC/DC adapters and so on.

Last time I did 20km each way on it, and although I got home pretty tired, it also felt super rewarding as well.

Hello everyone, and welcome to our daily JLPT thread! The July tests are coming up quickly, so I thought we could have a daily thread where we discuss questions, or talk about what we've been practicing. In this thread I will also be sharing one graded grammatical structure every day, so feel free to use it for your own reference.

本日の文法：JLPTN1の「～極（きわ）まりない」

～きわまりない Is a very interesting structure that could translate to "extremely" or "as can be".

A few example sentences for this could be

図書館で大声を出して騒ぐなんて、迷惑きわまりない。 "Speaking loudly and making a ruckus at a library is as annoying as it gets"

昨日、彼の態度は失礼きわまりない "His attitude yesterday was extremely rude"

This structure could be considered relatively similar in meaning to 「非常に」 though naturally the way it's built is different. In this case you mostly just attach it to a noun. That makes it relatively easy to use! Remember that this is a relatively literary or formal structure, so you probably won't be hearing it too much when speaking casually or colloquially.

Hope everybody has a very nice day studying for your upcoming test!