… What an odd thing to suggest for practice, especially from Koichi, who’s generally against rote handwriting practice anyway. Where does it say that?

… “Doesn’t seem professional”? Where else in TextFugu does Koichi actually seem professional? =P

In any case, English doesn’t have particles. Sure, it’s a shade specious to explain Japanese in terms of English grammar, but at this point, we’re talking about learners who may have had no exposure at all to Japanese. If you think it could do with tweaking, then how would YOU explain it?

One way to think of several of the particles is that whereas English has prepositions which come before (such as the “by” in “by hand”), Japanese has postpositions, which come after (the “で” in “手で”).

しし is also occasionally translated as “lion-dog”. As you commented, it’s the guardian statue at temples and other important structures. It’s kind of an Easternised version of the lion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_guardian_lion

The real animal is ライオン.

P.S. Hot-linking images is naughty. Also, blocked.

Ah, name kanji. So much fun. There’s so many exceptions that even native Japanese sometimes need to ask how names are pronounced. So, just to be sure: 泰博 = やすひろ, yes? Are you originally from Japan?

Rule of thumb is kun’yomi when it’s alone, and on’yomi when it’s part of a compound kanji, but yeah, there’s practically more exceptions than there are words than follow the rule. (Though the exception to the “always exceptions” rule is that kanji followed by okurigana – i.e. hiragana permanently attached, like verb endings or whatever – is always the kun’yomi.)

Rather than learning “this reading goes here, this reading goes here”, a better way to learn it would be to learn vocab. “This word is read like this.” You start to get something of a feel for it over time, but learn words rather than rules.

Welcome! Hope you enjoy your stay.

As KiaiFighter commented on but didn’t really address, you’ve got a couple of lessons to learn before you can manage sentences in Japanese. =P

こんばんわ -> こんばんは – the は is the topic particle, which is pronounced わ.

おんあまえ -> なまえ – this one’s a double-whammy. =P Firstly, the IME has messed something up. You’ve gotta be pretty careful when typing Ns near な-line or あ-line characters that you don’t wind up with an ん where you weren’t expecting it (or no ん where you were). The word is おなまえ. The second issue here is that using おなまえ for your own name is way too polite – it makes you appear arrogant. You’re basically saying “My esteemed name is Cory”. If you’re requesting a stranger’s or social superior’s name, you’d use おなまえ, but you’d never use it for your own. Just なまえ is sufficient.

Sentence structure: you’ve got two topic particles. You’ll learn about this when you get to that lesson, but you only need one of them – わたしのなまえ is the topic, so it’s わたしのなまえはこーリー

Kanji: Gonna disagree with Kiai on this one, don’t try to use kanji before you’re learnt it. Otherwise you risk saying completely the wrong thing. =D

I’ve been making a list of a few places that I want to go and try their specialty food, though I’ll admit that’s not my primary list of places I want to visit. =P