Now that I have had dinner, I can write tonight's post.

I have just finished dinner. What was on tonight's menu? I had buckwheat noodles with turnip and green onion, spinach stir-fried with garlic and ginger in vegetarian oyster sauce, fried bean curd topped with Thai chili sauce, and some kind of citrus fruit. I'm not sure what the fruit is called. At any rate, I'm full now.

• buckwheat noodles そば
• radish 大根
• green onion 葱
• spinach 法蓮草
  
• ginger 生姜
• garlic 蒜
• bean curd 豆腐

Look at the headline for today's post and the paragraph above. Do you see the present perfect tense?

• present perfect tense 現在完了時制

Why have I used present perfect tense? The reason in the first case was that finishing dinner happened in the past, but it is important now. The reason it is important is that I can now write this post. I can't write a post on an empty stomach.

In the first paragraph, I'm announcing news. Notice the pattern. The first sentence uses present perfect to announce the news. The second and third sentence use simple past to talk about the details. The final sentence uses simple present to talk about the results now. This is a really common pattern that you can find in the newspaper often.

It seems to be really hard for even advanced students to use present perfect correctly. Since I have seen so many students struggling with present perfect recently, I think I'm going to talk about present perfect for a few days. Keep reading. I hope that even if you have felt present perfect is difficult, you will become much better at it after the next few posts I write.