You might be after 弟子 = apprentice – America uses “intern” in some fairly different contexts to the rest of the world.

That said, there are cases where the Japanese word and the English word both get used, but in different situations. For example, ごはん refers to rice as part of a Japanese-style meal, whereas ライス is used when it’s part of a western-style meal (for example, カレーライス). くろ refers to most black thinks, while ブラック means black coffee. まど refers to your usual window, whereas ウィンドー refers to decorated shop windows. うんてん is the act of driving, while ドライブ is “going for a drive”.

Et cetera. =)

私に日本語を話してください！

Loved Miyajima. Kyoto and Koya-san were good too, but I so want to go back to Miyajima just to wander around. Or any city like it, really – Onomichi is high up on my list of places to visit if I ever get to go back again.

Welcome! I have a question: did you take photos? =D

Also, small pointer: the negative of ある is just ない. Also, not entirely sure if 帰る is the appropriate verb to use there, since it’s only used to refer to returning to a place that you call home.

では and には are double particles – they perform the function of both で or に and は. They’re used when some word which already has particle で or に is functioning as the topic of the sentence. For example:

ここでは走らないでください – please don’t run here. “Here” has the location-of-action で particle attached, and it’s the topic, so you get では.

冬には雪が多い – in winter, it snows a lot. Here, “in winter” is the topic, so you get 冬に + は.

You’ll also see でも and にも, but never ever でを or にを. Or をは.

んだ is described by the grammar dictionary as “a sentence ending which indicates that the speaker is explaining or asking for an explanation about some information shared with the hearer, or is talking about something emotively, as if it were of common interest to the speaker and the hearer” which is probably a better description than I could ever manage. It’s a way of softening the directness of sentences. =)

It’s also rendered (depending on formality) as のだ, んです and のです.

That’s kinda the other way around – if you study the vocab, you tend to encounter kanji, but if you’re studying kanji, there’s no guarantee you’re also looking at vocab.

マーク・ウェーバー wrote:

Well, news are often focused on one specific topic and if you haven’t ever researched that topic you will naturally be a bit lost.

Yeah, that. I once tried to read the kids version of Asahi Shimbun a while back, but the whole thing was nuclear radiation this, and subatomic particle that, which (for some odd reason) didn’t seem to come up in Japanese class in between learning the days of the week and whatnot. =)

Fairly sure the first thousand kanji represents 90% of the most-often used kanji, but yeah, that still means you don’t understand one in ten kanji you encounter, which can sometimes suddenly flash over into “Gah! I don’t get this at all!”. My suggestion: go through an article with a dictionary, look up any words you don’t understand, and add them into an Anki deck or something.