こんにちは皆さん！ 久しぶりですね。このコミュニティが結構静かで少し復活しようと思っていました。

それに従って、これから（できる限り)日本語の週刊練習スレッドを始めます。

何でも書いても大丈夫ですから、ごゆっくり自由に日本語を使って、チャットしたり、自分にノートを残したり、なにか最近勉強した文法を練習したりしてくださいね！

Hello everyone! It's been a long time. This community has been pretty quiet for a while, so I've been thinking about reviving it.

Therefore, I've decided to start a weekly (as much as possible) Japanese language thread.

You can write anything, so use Japanese as you please, chat with others, leave notes for yourself, or even practice any recent grammar you've learnt.

よく考えると、なんかこのポストを書くのも自分にとって練習になって草

One trope you’ll see repeated all over anime, manga, novels and even in real life is that of the ボケ (the idiot) and ツッコミ (straight man). Once you know a bit more about its dynamics and some of the more famous 芸人 duos, you start seeing it everywhere.

Downtown is one of the more famous ones, but if you want a shortlist of some of the most famous and relevant duos, the M-1 Grand Prix as well as the contestants of the Documental streaming series are great places to get into Manzai.

Manzai is certainly one of the most relevant media in Japanese, and it is so important you start to see language trends as well as cultural shifts reflected in manzai performances. At the same time you also get to see manzai actively shape Japanese culture and set new trends. It’s a great step if you want your Japanese to improve considerably and get closer to real Japanese humour.

I thought this was a very interesting vieo about the use of "huh?" or 「はぁ？」 and how many languages around the world have found a quick way to let the other party know that there has been a problem in communication.

The Japanese level is rather advanced but I encourage intermediate learners to give it a try and see if you manage to pick up a good chunk of the vocabulary you didn't know from context as well.

I just switched to Android after being a very long time iOS user and I'm somewhat at a loss at the best apps and must-haves of Japanese content, dictionaries and similar stuff.

What are your best recommendations?

I started commuting by bicycle a couple years ago, which at first I thought would be a major challenge, since I was so used to commuting by bus every day.

A few things I definitely realised I needed during my first couple years were:

1. Two baskets. The one on the front for personal stuff like my jacket, a small bag with my phone, wallet and so on. The one on the back for work-related stuff. That’s where I carry most of my cables, mic stands (if they fit), audio interfaces and stuff. I’m an audio engineer, so I need to carry a lot of stuff for work most of the time.

2. A helmet. I know a lot of commuters don’t use helmets because they’re annoying and they can be difficult to carry around, but I personally realised that most of the time I preferred feeling like I wasn’t a fall away from death. Especially since I’m usually cruising around 20-30km/h. It felt right for me.

3. A rainsuit. Eventually I bought the entire kit. Waterproof pants, jacket and even a waterproof spray for my glasses. I manage to fit them tightly packed inside one of the bags on the back and I don’t even notice they’re there most of the time. They’ve become must-haves for me.

4. Cash. I usually never carried cash around, but after I got a flat tire on my way to work, and the guy at the bike repair stop only received cash, I started carrying cash around pretty much everywhere. At least enough cash to afford a quick repair if anything goes wrong. I also carry a small set of keys and screwdrivers just in case, but I’d rather not mess with the tires myself if I can get someone else to do it for me.

Ultimately, what I’ve discovered about bike commuting, is that it’s a completely different experience from road biking. Obviously this sounds logical to experienced riders, but having never used a bicycle for practical purposes before (and only used it for fun), I legitimately thought it was going to be far more difficult to have a normal life commuting exclusively by bike. You don’t really have to be super knowledgeable about bicycles, or in very good shape, and you don’t have to be extremely passionate about cycling as a sport or an activity to be able to enjoy the massive advantages of bicycle commuting. Mostly, knowing exactly how long every trip is going to take, getting some light-to-medium exercise every day, and getting to work in a much better mood.

This channel is pretty fun whenever I need something to watch and relax without thinking much about it. It has also helped me realise I make a lot of mistakes when writing by hand which inevitably leads to messier characters. Definitely recommend watching if you’re into this type of stuff.

This video by Kotorabo, one of the best YouTube channels about language and etymologies talks about the question we’ve all wondered at some point: why doesn’t Japanese just get rid of Kanji?

Alright everyone! JLPT is tomorrow. Discuss anything related to the test, success or failure stories, fun anecdotes and everything in-between in this thread!

Good luck to all of you taking JLPT within the following hours!

In my opinion, one of the best tracks of the past couple of decades.

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!