How to Make a Buddhist Shrine

This post reminded me of something I keep alluding to but also keep forgetting to explain: Buddhist shrines! Apparently, I had written about this before seven years ago, but it seems like a good time for a refresher.

What is a Buddhist shrine?

A Buddhist shrine or altar is something you might find in a Buddhist temple, or at home. It is a place to venerate the Buddha: the Enlightened One who discovered the Dharma and taught it to others. The core of Buddhism is the Three Treasures:

  • The Buddha – the teacher
  • The Dharma – the teaching (a.k.a. “the way things work”), and
  • The Sangha – the community past and present.

Sometimes you’ll find Buddhist shrines devoted to other, more cosmic Buddhas besides the historical Buddha (a.k.a. “Shakyamuni” Buddha). This is not unusual since every Buddha, historical or not, embodies the Dharma and Buddhist truths. So, one is as good as another.

Why make a Buddhist shrine?

There are two ways to look at it, in my opinion.

First, if you are new to Buddhism, and want to formally become a Buddhist, taking refuge in the Three Treasures is the first step. To me, making a shrine at home is an expression of taking refuge. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it’s the sincerity that matters.

Second, a home Buddhist shrine is like a mirror into oneself. If one is diligent, lazy, anxious, sincere, or confused, this is reflected in how one maintains or venerates the shrine. So, home veneration is a perfectly legit Buddhist practice (it’s not all just meditation, by the way). You will learn much about yourself through the veneration of the Buddha.

How does one make a Buddhist shrine?

There are many traditions within Buddhism, and many ways to enshrine the Buddha. The guidelines below are somewhat generic, but intended for people who do not live in Buddhist countries, or low on resources. You can call it “beginner Buddhism”, “budget Buddhism” or whatever.

First, you need either a statue or picture of Shakyamuni Buddha (or any Buddha). Sometimes, it’s a bit fuzzy who is a Buddha and who isn’t. If unsure, search for “Shakyamuni Buddha” on the Internet, find something you like, and use that.

If you don’t have a statue, you can also print out a picture of the Buddha, and just glue it to the underside of a box lid. I have a small balsa-wood box that fits in my hand below:

If you can get an image of the Buddha to fit, you can tape or glue it to the underside. You can use a tin box lid too, such as this one I got in Ireland:

If you don’t have access to a good box lid, just use a stand of some kind. You can also make a pocket shrine too if that works better.

Once you are ready, here are some recommended tips:

  • Buddhist shrines are often put in higher places as a gesture of respect. Bookshelves work too.
  • Also, put the shrine in a place that’s quiet and secluded if possible (good for contemplation and reflection)
  • Again, as a gesture of respect, keep the area around it neat and tidy.

What are common offerings to a shrine?

By far the most common offerings are fruit, flowers and/or incense. None of these are strictly required, but they are all part of the tradition. Often at a temple, you will see people offering incense to the Buddha, and the same can be done at home. Incense isn’t always easy to find (depends on where you live), so if you don’t have access to incense, that’s OK. Also remember fire safety.

Fruit is offered because the Buddha did not eat meat, and flowers are a gesture of respect to an eminent figure such as the Buddha. Sometimes people offer rice as well. I have even met a Western-Buddhist like myself who offers breakfast cereal (without milk) to the Buddha since it is a staple grain food. These are all perfectly fine options.

Sometimes people also light candles too. I used to own an LED candle, which is much safer and lasts longer, but they can be hard to find.

What does one do at a shrine?

A bodhisattva gesturing with hands together in Anjali. Photo courtesy of Rijksmuseum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Each person will be a little different, also traditions differ. But the simplest thing you can do is to hold your hands together in the Anjali pose, like when people do “namaste” in Yoga classes. It’s a universal gesture in Indian culture and also in Buddhism. In Japanese Buddhism, which is called gassho.

If you put your hands together in Anjali / Gassho, take a deep breath, and center yourself. You can also say something like “praise to the Buddha” or any similar phrase. It can be your own language, or one of the many liturgical languages in Buddhism. If you are unsure, check the tradition you wish to follow.

Oftentimes, people will also recite verses from the Buddhist texts (sutras) as well, or dedicate the good merit towards others. These practices vary, but the gist of these is to:

  • Recite teachings of the Buddha (a.k.a. the Dharma).
  • Dedicate any good merit you earn for the benefit of others.

People also frequently pray to the Buddha. Westerners might find this strange, but an important theme of Buddhism, especially Mahayana Buddhism, is the Buddhas’ compassion and desire to aid all beings. To accomplish this they take on many forms and methods. In my younger days, when I used to work a scary night shift, I often recited the nembutsu to calm my nerves. That might seem silly, but it really worked. When my daughter first moved out, I prayed for her safety too.

If you are new to Buddhism, or in a difficult situation, do what is reasonable and don’t hesitate to try something. As your Buddhist “muscle” grows stronger, you can branch out and try other things.

Any other advice?

My own Buddhist altar, and my relationship with it, has changed over the last 20 years, and if you practice Buddhism long enough, it will probably change for you too. That’s normal. Remember, the Buddhist shrine is also a mirror into oneself.

Good luck!

The Constitutions of Japan

Golden Week is fast approaching in Japan, which comprises a handful of small holidays including one called Constitution Day (kenpō kinenbi, 健保記念日).

The concept of founding a nation with a fundamental set of laws, and not on the authority of a person or dynasty, is a relatively new phenomenon. There are precedents in the past, such as the Code of Justinian in 529, or Prince Shotoku’s Seventeen-Article Constitution in 604, but modern legal documents as we know it date to the Enlightenment era.

Technically speaking, Japan has had three constitutions including the Seventeen-Article Constitution mentioned above. However, Prince Shotoku’s document was not legally-binding, more of a statement of beliefs. The Taika Reform of 645 was probably closer to a legal code reform as we know it and to some degree or another lasted until the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

But once the Meiji Restoration completed, Japan went shopping for modern Western institutions: railroads, military technology, systems of government, etc. Constitutions, too. By this time, multiple Western countries had developed into republics or constitutional monarchies, so Japan had multiple sources to choose from.

The Meiji Constitution of 1889

Ultimately, Japan elected to adopt a modified form of the Prussian constitution, which had a strong central monarchy and a weaker national Diet (congress). We now call this the Meiji Constitution and it was adopted in 1889.

Ceremony for the Promulgation of the Constitution, by Wada Eisaku (和田英作) via Wikimedia Commons

A few notes about the Meiji Constitution worth examining for non-legal experts like myself.

  • The monarchy was sacred, and thus lese majeste laws were in force.
  • The Emperor was the supreme commander of the armed forces, not the civilian government.
  • The constitution granted conditional rights such as:
    • private property
    • freedom of movement
    • freedom of speech
    • right to assembly

Such rights could be taken away if the government felt there was a risk to national security, but this style of constitution was not unusual for European monarchies at the time. In fact, the Imperial court of Japan reformed its own peerage system into something that matched European-style aristocracies with titles from the pre-Meiji period were converted to barons, dukes, and so on.

But the Japanese constitution was a bit unusual in that everything rested upon the Emperor. The civilian government had no authority over the military.

Nonetheless, at first this seemed to work really well. The Meiji government pursued a European-style colonial model, and absorbed neighboring countries such as Korea, Taiwan, and parts of northwestern China, while also defeating other colonial powers such as Russia.

But starting in the 1920’s this system started to break down. The Extra History series does a really nice coverage of this era:

A combination of economic problems, low education, and a death-special of hyper-nationalism triggered the military to take actions into its own hands. Since the civilian government couldn’t stop them, the violence and assassinations spun out of control, and rogue elements in the military would take action in China, seizing more territory under flimsy pretenses. The Second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937, and eventually led to the Pacific Theater of World War II.

The Constitution of 1947

During the US Occupation of Japan after World War II, occupation forces decided that the Japanese government needed a serious reform to avoid falling into a similar pattern in the future. Thus, the American forces proposed a new draft constitution, which was ultimately adopted (with considerable Japanese input) in 1947. This is the constitution that governs Japan to this day. You can see the full text in English here.

Note that the constitution of 1947 does not abolish the 1889 one, it is technically a big amendment to it.

The preamble of the 1947 Constitution, courtesy of English: Japanese government, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Its preamble states that:

Government is a sacred trust of the people, the authority for which is derived from the people, the powers of which are exercised by the representatives of the people, and the benefits of which are enjoyed by the people.

Compared to the 1889 constitution, the source of power shifted from the Emperor to the people. So far, this is pretty similar to the preamble of the US Constitution (170 years notwithstanding). Further, the Emperor was now a figurehead, similar to other democratic systems, and civilian governments hold power over the military.

Further, what’s fascinating about this US-drafted constitution is that in many ways it’s far more progressive than the US Constitution itself. To be fair, they are about 170 years apart. In the 1947 Constitution, human rights have been reinforced and include things that are not found in the US one:

  1. Slavery is explicitly abolished.
  2. The right to privacy.
  3. The right to work and to vote regardless of ethnicity, gender, etc.1
  4. Equal rights for women (yes, the US still technically doesn’t have this)

Further the Japanese constitution enforces term limits and age limits, something the US constitution does not do.

Finally, the most noteworthy feature of the Constitution of 1947 is the total renunciation of war, also known as Article 9. The official translation states that:

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

In other words, Japan renounces the right to start wars with others. This leads to some interesting challenges that go beyond this blog post, but (as far as I know) this was the first of its kind in legal history.

But as this article points out, simply having a progressive and innovative constitution isn’t enough. Japan struggles with right-wing forces that seek undermine some of the provisions, just as happens in the US.

It often comes down to people’s willingness to uphold a constitution.P.S. I started writing this in November

1 Side note: in the 1990’s, I actually met Beate Sirota Gordon, one of the ladies who helped draft these articles of the Japanese constitution. She gave a talk at my university and shared anecdotes from that time. Very fascinating women, and even today many people benefit from her contributions. RIP. 🙏

RIP Mr Spock

On this day in 2015, Leonard Nimoy (a.k.a. Mister Spock) passed away. He was a childhood hero of mine, so even today I still feel the loss.

A small Buddhist-style memorial shrine I setup…

The Star Trek character Mr Spock started as a simple alien character, but through Leonard Nimoy’s input, and through some excellent writers, he came to embody many virtues that I think we can all learn from: patience, reason over irrationality, the primacy of science, mind over body, pursuit of knowledge, goodwill toward all life, and so on.

Of course, mourning someone’s death is one thing. But also, we can honor his memory by applying these principles in our own lives. Make the world a little bit of a better place, in other words.

So, rest in peace Mr Nimoy, and may all readers live long and prosper.

A Crash Course in Tai-gi: Taiwanese Hokkien

Chalk this post up as a “cool things I wanted to share with readers” post. A little while back I talked about the Hokkien-dialect of Chinese, which is widespread in Southeast Asia, and also Taiwan. In Taiwan it is often called Tâi-gì (台語 or 臺語) which sounds like “dye-ghee”.

However, I started to run into issues finding resources on how to learn Hokkien, until last week, when I had a chance conversation with a co-worker. She was Taiwanese-American, and had taken classes through Taiwan School of Taiwanese American Center of Northern California (TAC for short). She had completed her first year of online courses, and was in her second year. She encouraged me to try the same. Because the next course started the following Sunday, I had to register quickly, but thankfully I got in, and had my first lesson!

Reading about a language is one thing, studying it under a native speaking teacher is a much more helpful experience. Just hearing someone pronounce things is really helpful for making sense of the language, plus we are using a nice text book from Bite Size Taiwanese called “Short Takes“. I wasn’t aware of this book, but wish I had bought it sooner. It’s very helpful for covering the basics.

Further, having a native speaker teach you helps make sense of the Romanization system of Taiwanese, which is a bit confusing for me. We mostly use the government recommended system of Tâi-lô (台罗) which is newer than the Peh-oe-ji system, but has government support, and is a bit more intuitive for Westerners in my opinion. Tai-lo isn’t easy though. Becasue I have a background learning Japanese for a long time, and also learning Mandarin in my youth, I found that I can read the Chinese-characters more easily than the Romanization. But Chinese characters are tough because they don’t tell you how to pronounce it, or what tone to use (Taiwanese has eight tones, Mandarin has four, Vietnamese has five). So, you need Romanization in any case to learn how to pronounce the characters.

For now, we rely on Tai-lo a lot. But I have spent the week trying ot make sense of it. Some things in Tai-lo are easy to read and intuit like :

  • bì which sounds like English “bee”, but the tone is low (hence the grave accent mark). This is “rice” (米). Side note, in Japanese this same character can be read as “bei” or “mai“.
  • lâi which sounds like English “lie”, but the tone slightly rises (the circumflex mark). This means to come (来), and in Japanese this can be read as “rai“. Very similar.

So far so good. But then there are trickier examples:

  • tshiú which is hard to intuit. Apparently it sounds like English “chew”, and the grave accent mark again indicates a high tone that falls downward. This is hand (手), which interestingly in Japanese can be read as “shu“. Pretty close.
  • tsiok which is another hard one. Apparently it sounds similar to English “joke” or in some regions “junk” without the “n”. This means “so” or “very” (足), but in Japanese this character means “foot” and is pronounced like “soku“. Close.
  • lōo which is a little tricky at first. Apparently it sounds like English “law”, not “loo”. The flat tone mark means it’s a medium, flat tone. This means a road (路), and in Japanese it is read as “ro“. Again, pretty close.
  • thinn is another tricky one. It sounds like English “tea” but the double-N means the “ee” sound is more nasal. You don’t pronounce the double-N. It just gives a clue. This means sky or weather (天), and in Japanese it is read as “ten”. Again, pretty close.

Finally we get to really hard ones like:

  • thng which is hard for Westerners to grasp. It is not English “thing”. The “th” is a “T” sound, but it’s a bit stronger, more breathier, like the “th” in Thai food. The “ng” sound is the vowel here, but is like English “ng” as in “hung“. Try and read it aloud. Anyhow, this means “soup” (湯), but in Japanese this means hot water, and can be be read as “tou” (but usually read natively as “yu“).

This is just a tiny sample. Also, I learned how to input Taiwanese on my iPhone using a keyboard app called Lohankha which is not related to the native keyboard configs for Mandarin Chinese (those come with the iPhone software).

For example the word for ten (十) is tsa̍p which, according to the “Short Takes” book is the “za” in “pizza” followed by a high, clipped tone and a soft “p” at the end. Definitely one of those that you have to hear from a native speaker. Anyhow, here’s me messing around with the keyboard earlier. If I type in “tsap”, I get several selections. If I add “8” at the end because it’s the high, clipped eighth-tone, it will narrow the selection further…

Screenshot

That’s how you make the most of the Taiwan keyboard app Lohankha.

Anyhow, I will try to share more later when I can. Thanks for reading!

P.S. The TAC is a great school, and well worth signing up for the online adult courses if interested.

P.P.S. Double-post today.

P.P.P.S. There is an online-dictionary for Taiwanese here.

Green Buddhism

O green world
Don’t desert me now
Bring me back to fallen town
Where someone is still alive

Gorillaz, “Demon Days” (2005)

A while back I talked about the notion of the Eco-Sangha, introduced by our old minister at the local Jodo Shinshu Buddhist temple, Rev. Don Castro. In my recent explorations of Zen, especially Soto Zen, I found this really nice article from the official homepage. The gist of the article reminds me of the old Eco-Sangha, and includes some common-sense environment principles to strive for:

  1. Healthy air, water and soil.
  2. Green, renewable energy.

But also, the last point quotes some interesting excerpts from both Dogen and Keizan the dual founders of Soto Zen…

Dogen Zenji, the historical founder is quoted as saying:1

The colors of the mountains and the sound of mountain streams are the voice and embodiment of Shakyamuni Buddha.

source : https://www.sotozen.com/eng/activities/principles/index.html

But the restorer of Soto Zen, Keizan Zenji, is also quoted as saying:

You should not see Shakyamuni Buddha in anything other than nature and living things. Mountains, rivers and all other things in nature may take on various forms, but they are all the embodiment of Shakyamuni Buddha.

source : https://www.sotozen.com/eng/activities/principles/index.html

What I find interesting about both quotes is that they have a common theme of nature embodying the Buddha, but also their similarities toward the Jodo Shinshu attitude of nature and the Buddha. In the case of Jodo Shinshu, they swap Amida Buddha for Shakyamuni Buddha, but as we see in the 2nd chapter of the Lotus Sutra, all Buddhas are of the same quality. It literally doesn’t matter which Buddha you’re talking about in this context, when we see nature, we see the Buddha at work.

Thus, caring for nature is more than just a practical act to save our necks from Climate Change, it is also a matter of piety and goodwill.

Namu Shakamuni Butsu
Namu Amida Butsu

1 Sadly, the website doesn’t list the textural sources. This is very frustrating when trying to work backwards and find the original Japanese sources, and happens a lot in Western-Buddhist translations. I wish people would be diligent and providing sources where possible for nerds like myself.

Happy Seventh Blog-o-versary

I was very busy today getting taxes done, and working, so I totally forgot that my own blog celebrates its seventh anniversary today! 🥳

The first post I wrote is here, but the first useful post was here. I had a pretty frustrating experience with the previous Japanese-culture / Buddhism blog,1 plus some unwanted attention at the time, so I was fairly certain I would never blog again, but then the urge to write started up and again here we are.

This blog is, in the end, one nerd’s interest in certain things, but I also strongly believe in the importance of sharing as much information as possible. Sometimes I get it wrong, sometimes the writing is kind of lousy, sometimes the posts are just boring, but after seven years I am glad I kept it up. I’ve learned a lot, and I hope you guys have too.

Thank you all for readership, support, comments, and so on.

Best wishes, and hopefully we’ll be around for another 7 years or more!

1 I’ve been blogging since 2006, but many of them are long gone, and I can barely remember the names anymore. 😅 Impermanence and all that.

Meditation for Dummies: The Fukan Zazengi

I’ve been sitting on this post for a little bit, but I wanted to cover some meditation basics. The truth is, I kind of suck at meditation. I have been trying it off and on since I was 16, but I have never been particularly dedicated toward it, and apart from a few random experiences in Zen temples over the years, I never really had much experience. I spent much of 2025 focusing more on meditation more than before, but the holiday chaos and parenting have taken their toll, and I meditate probably 5-10 minutes a week, if lucky.

That said, I appreciate the virtues of meditation more than I did before and that’s how I stumbled upon an old Soto-Zen text written by Dogen in 1227 called the Fukan Zazengi (普勧坐禅儀), or the “Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen”.

I like to think of it as a “Meditation for Dummies” book.

The official translation from the Soto Zen International homepage is quite good. As a Buddhist text, it is pretty short, short enough to read in maybe 10 minutes, but a nice thing to reflect on from time to time as you build experience. If you are curious, I highly recommend skimming through it. Most of the Fukan Zazengi covers common-sense, practical matters: i.e. best practices for meditation.

But it also offers some encouragement, too:

This being the case, intelligence or lack of it is not an issue; make no distinction between the dull and the sharp-witted. If you concentrate your effort single-mindedly, that in itself is wholeheartedly engaging the way.

And also Dogen reminds us that there’s not necessarily one right way to do it:

In general, in our world and others, in both India and China, all equally hold the buddha-seal….Although they say that there are ten thousand distinctions and a thousand variations, they just wholeheartedly engage the way in zazen.

In short, Dogen is saying in the Fukan Zazengi there’s no need to dance around the edges, just try it, make mistakes, grow from it, etc.

Good advice, I think.

Namu Shakamuni Butsu

The Pain of Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a tough thing. The desire to sink into happier memories of the past, especially in the face of difficult times, is strong. My kids tease me about it as I get older because I sometimes sound like an old man grumbling about “the good ol’ days”. And they are right to do so.

Nostalgia, if left unchecked, can be like a “mental opium”: pleasant, addicting, but it separates us from reality.

Once gone, the face of youth vanishes irrevocably. We cannot bring back the past. When suddenly confronted with impermanence, we cannot bring back the past.

The Shushōgi, chapter one, fascicle three

This longing for the past only seems to get worse with age. Some of us even play old video games from 25 years ago. 😌

By itself, this really isn’t bad thing: after all, the more experiences you accumulate, the more you have to look back upon. Also, appreciating old things isn’t bad either (“so old it’s new!”). But if you indulge in nostalgia, you long for the past more and more, at the expense of the present and the future. Further, it tends to gloss over the past in a way that makes it look rosy. I loved playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons as a teen, but when I look at the material now, it’s a messy, unpolished game with some crazy loopholes, and dated stereotypes. It was a great game for its time, but better games exist now.

I personally don’t really miss my high school days very much, but I do enjoy reflecting back upon college sometimes. Sometimes I cringe at my young 20’s self, but that’s OK too. Looking back on the past, we can grow from it.

But I guess what I am saying is that the best years of your life aren’t always in the past. In fact, there’s much you can do here and now: new things to learn, new things to discover, new futures to build. If Star Trek teaches us one thing, is that the future can be bright.

So, while it’s nice for me to go back and play classic Castlevania from time to time, there are also new games out there, and new experiences just waiting over the horizon.

Then again, an even better thing you can do is to take time to appreciate this moment. What you do here and now, what you think and what you feel towards others now is probably the most important. It will not come again, but its effects will continue to ripple into the future. Plant good seeds now, and you’ll have plenty of good fruit in the future…

Parting

Enough, Ananda! Do not grieve, do not lament! For have I not taught from the very beginning that with all that is dear and beloved there must be change, separation, and severance? Of that which is born, come into being, compounded, and subject to decay, how can one say: ‘May it not come to dissolution!’? There can be no such state of things.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.16.1-6.vaji.html

Many eons ago, in the summer of 2001, when Destiny’s Child was going strong with “Survivor”, and Daft Punk released their album Discovery, I was in Hanoi, Vietnam studying abroad with the intent of going into graduate school later. Needless to say, I crashed and never went into grad school.

But I do remember spending a lot of time in dial-up Internet cafes, whose computers all had the same background poster for the game Final Fantasy X.

I had been playing Final Fantasy games all the way back to the original. As a kid I was play-testing games for Nintendo of America (they recruited local kids on a voluntary basis then) and got to play the original Final Fantasy before other kids in the US did. I got the game later for my birthday, and always loved Final Fantasy since. Final Fantasy X just looked so cool, and it was exciting to see what the tenth title would have in store.

However, because I was a broke college student in a poor, communist country, I couldn’t play FFX. When I got back to the US, I was now a broke adult who quit grad school and needed a job. Then two weeks later, 9/11 happened, so the economy only got worse. It took years to climb out of that mess before getting married, and raising a family.

All this is to say, I never got to play FFX until I found the HD Remaster recently.

Warning: this post has major spoilers.

.

.

.

.

I struggled initially with the game controls and didn’t really understand the plot or the Sphere Grid system until about halfway in when it all started click into place. The story of crashing Yuna’s unhappy wedding, and the budding romance between lead characters Tidus and Yuna was really sweet. Then you get to this scene…

At this point, I was bawling my eyes out. It was really beautiful. It made me think a lot about my wife and I when we first met. We had our own romantic moment like FFX, albeit it was a snowy night for us Nevertheless, this brought back a lot of warm memories. It’s a wonderful feeling to be young and truly fall in love for the first time. I am also happy I can still share my life with that same person even almost 30 years later, raise a family, travel together, and so on.

But as I get older there’s also a nagging thought in the back of my head that it won’t last forever. My wife and I have had conversations about this too. Sooner or later, one of us will go. The thought of being in a world without my wife is a very unpleasant one, but the thought of not being able to protect her anymore is equally unpleasant.

And yet, one of these eventualities will occur someday.

… and is what the Buddha is warning his attendant Ananda about: separation is inevitable. It’s just how things work. It’s not that there aren’t pleasant things in life, and falling in love very high on that list, it’s just that it can’t last forever and parting will occur sooner or later.

Watching my kids grow up and leave the nest has also been bittersweet. I cherish the memories of playing Legos with my firstborn daughter, but that little girl no longer exists, and the adult is now living in another country. My son is approaching adulthood too. I miss the “Pokemon battles” we would act out together when he was a little boy, but that boy is now an awkward teenager, and before I know it, he will be gone too. When he marries someday, I can imagine my wife bawling her eyes out.

So, the Buddha might sound like a downer at first, but he’s also pointing what is plainly obvious too: for every pleasant moment in life, it carries a sad burden too. He asks us to view the world with both eyes open. We cannot simply shut ourselves in from the world; we have to live it fully, but also fully aware of what it entails.

We have to see it through to the end.

Namu Shakamuni Butsu

P.S. Final Fantasy X truly is an amazing game and a beautiful story. 10/10 recommend. As of writing I haven’t quite finish the game yet, but I have briefly seen some spoilers and kind of dreading what comes next.

Building Vocabulary At Scale

Imagine if you will a kids martial arts school. The kids (including my son) are on the floor practicing, while the parents are sitting and watching. A pair of moms gossip, while bored dads check their phones constantly.

I, on the other hand, have two books open and cramming vocabulary (photo above). This has been my life for the past five or six months.

Why? Because I am going to take the JLPT certification exam this year?

“Again?!” you might be thinking. “Didn’t you bomb the last exam?”

Well, yes. Yes I did. 😅

I spent a lot of time reflecting why I failed so badly, and the basic problem is vocabulary. I just don’t know enough.

I can read Japanese, and often do, but I rely on dictionaries too much, which slows things down, and makes it hard to just enjoy a book. It’s also disruptive to comprehending the sentence.

The problem is is that a language, any language, has tens of thousands of words. A native speaker intuitively knows most of them, but a foreigner has to catch up and learn them too. They’ll never quite know as much as a native speaker, but knowing a lot of words helps reach a “critical mass” where you can function in that language and learn the rest later.

But how many words are needed for critical mass?

A very rough guess is maybe 10,000 words, enough to be a functional adult living and working in that society. Maybe 20,000? I am not sure. Many of these words are grade-school level vocabulary, btw. You might be surprised by how much a child knows by the fifth grade.

The point is is that if you want to get good at a language you have to invest a lot of time and effort to building your vocabulary. It’s not impossible but it’s both a long-term and large scale effort.

Flash cards are a tried-and-true method, and Anki SRS is a great way to make flash cards. But making good flash cards that are helpful and not a burden is important too.

Previously, I made my flash cards too long, too complicated. I had both “recall” (English to Japanese) and “recognition” (Japanese to English) fields in the same cards, and the sentences were long and took time to read.

This is OK when learning tens of words, but thousands of flash cards like this is really clunky; and review takes forever. As a working parent with little free time, that’s not going to be sustainable.

So, starting in late 2025, I started making smaller, simpler flash cards. For starters, I want to at least recognize (Japanese to English) a word in a sentence, so I stopped adding recall fields. Also, I use very short, simple example sentences that I pull from my textbook and my kids’ dictionaries. If the sentence is too long, I pare it down to the essential part.

This is an example Cloze-format card I made:

The word I care about is highlighted in bold font, and the English answer, “view”, is below (the Cloze field).

In practice it looks like this :

and the answer:

The goal is to make flash cards that you can flip through quickly and easily, but also unambiguous (no mind games), so you can review many cards in one session without getting tired.

If the card is too vague, or too complex, it becomes exhausting to review and you get frustrated.

Also, it really helps to learn a few words a day, not cram many at once. This means less stress, but also better retention in the long-run.

I have also found the Shin Kanzen Master vocabulary books, like this one, pretty helpful for providing a level-appropriate list of words to learn; and a good foundation for making flash cards.

So, is it working? I started this sometime late last year and I have noticed that many of my books are easier to read than before. I can read whole pages without needing a dictionary. And yet, there are times when I still have to use a dictionary if the page has unfamiliar vocabulary.

So, I am happy that I have made progress, but also I have a long ways to go.

And the JLPT exam is only months away….