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Passing the JLPT N1 — Here’s how I did it, so you can too!

Strategies to take down the N1 final boss.

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Is this the tiniest teleworking space in Japan?

Small building comes with a big price tag. 

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AnkiSnap pen turns highlighting into a smartphone game that makes studying a breeze【Video】

Do you highlight things but still forget them? AnkiSnap might be able to help!

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Junior high school in Japan introduces trial afternoon nap time for students

Requested by the students themselves, the afternoon siesta is designed to improve concentration levels and protect the environment.

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Need some personal space? South Korean furniture makers take studying to the next level

Do you easily get distracted by your surroundings when you ought to be working or studying? This might just be the kind of “personal space” you need!

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Five reasons Japan’s karaoke boxes are great places for group study sessions with your classmates

Odds are at some point you’ve been part of an after-school study group with your classmates, either to help each other power through a difficult course or cram for an important exam. Maybe you got together at a friend’s place or took over a corner of your local coffee house, but in Japan, neither of those of those is really a viable choice of location.

Japanese homes are generally too small to host a large group of visitors. Meanwhile, the coffee break-loving country’s cafes tend to be packed when schools let out in the afternoon, so it’s often a serious challenge to find even a single empty seat in a Tokyo Starbucks, let alone adjacent ones for all your study buddies. So in response, clever Japanese students thought outside the box and discovered a trendy new venue for group study sessions: karaoke boxes.

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Teen fashion brand Cecil McBee releases range of educational books, makes studying kawaii

In the west, there’s a wide range of stores selling affordable and cute fashion marketed towards teens, such as H&M, TopShop, Zara and Forever 21. But in Japan, one of the most popular places for picking up cute clothes is the interestingly named chain store Cecil McBee. With a name seemingly pilfered for some bizarre reason from Tulsa-born jazz musician Cecil McBee (he even tried to sue, but was unsuccessful), the chain has stores across Japan, with a main store located inside the trendy 109 shopping centre in Shibuya.

Now, however, the chain is branching out from fashion to release a range of educational books aimed at junior high school girls with adorably kawaii covers and illustrations. After all, you still want to look cute while you’re studying, don’t you?

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Tried-and-tested ways to learn Japanese while having fun!

Everyone has their own studying methods, but no matter which one you choose, learning a language boils down to mastering four things; reading, writing, listening and speaking. I know people who study so hard they literally memorize words out of a dictionary. There are also the people who think that the best way to pick up a language is to live in the native country and speak the lingo as much as possible.

I believe in practicing over studying. And by “practicing”, I mostly mean “surfing the internet”. If you’re currently struggling with learning the Japanese language, or if you hate studying but would like to improve your Japanese, read on!

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Study reveals too much Internet and video games is bad for your grades

How much time do you spend on the Internet every day? An hour? Less? If so, great for you! For the rest of us Internet addicts, there’s a little bit of bad news: The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, or more briefly the Monbusho or MEXT, and the National Institute for Educational Policy, or NIER, have released their results of a study into the impact of Internet use on scholastic performance. The results were not particularly surprising, unfortunately.

If you’re thinking all your hours spent looking at doge memes (“Wow! Such tests! Much knowledge! So smarts!”) and pictures of Taiwanese McDonald’s employees were hurting your grades, well, unfortunately, there’s a very good chance that you’re right!

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Shiba Inu Makes Sure Her Master Won’t Fail the School Entrance Exam

By now, students in Japan have completed the entrance examinations required to enter high school and college, and until this past week, they had been diligently studying for the early March test. The tests, which cover core subjects such as math, English, and science, require hours of studying for several months to pass. Sometimes, students study for so long that they become burnt out, falling asleep right at their desks.

In a video taken two weeks before the big test, a little Shiba Inu is making sure her master doesn’t become a ronin. This term literally means, “wandering samurai without a master to serve,” but in modern times the term is used to describe a student who is waiting for another chance to pass the entrance exam. Watch the adorable video after the break.

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