Taking Kanji Apart: Radicals and Components
As any learner knows, kanji are an inescapable and daunting aspect of learning Japanese. There’s more than 2000 of the little devils and each one has multiple pronunciations, multiple meanings, and a predefined stroke order. That’s a lot to learn, so it’s understandable that most teachers and books avoid…
Do you know these Japanese words?
These words are the latest additions to the Nihonshock Vocabulary Bank (updated daily... mostly). Want to see all the words?
さっぷうけい [sappuukei] – A bland or uninspiring environment. 風景 [fuukei] is the word for a scene or view of somewhere.
[Read More]なつばて [natsubate] – Something about the 38℃ days just makes you tired, you know. In Japanese, that fatigue is called 夏バテ.
[Read More]殺風景
さっぷうけい [sappuukei] – A bland or uninspiring environment. 風景 [fuukei] is the word for a scene or view of somewhere.
Go: the perfect game
After a hiatus spanning almost a year and a half, I’m back in 2012 and my first article is about the board game of Go…. which coincidentally was also the primary reason for my absence. (^^;) I first learned of the game at a small cafe in the outskirts of Nagoya. Like many small cafes [...]
How to park your car in Japan
Have you ever wondered how Japan fits their roughly 78 million vehicles into a habitable area roughly the size of Maine? Well, it takes just the right mix of creativity and precision (it also helps that most of the cars are really tiny). In this post I introduce a few of the methods Japanese people have come up with for getting the most out of their limited parking space.
夏バテ
なつばて [natsubate] – Something about the 38℃ days just makes you tired, you know. In Japanese, that fatigue is called 夏バテ.
手品
てじな [tejina] – ‘Hand’ (手) plus ‘wares’ (品) gives us the Japanese word for sleight-of-hand. The word 奇術 [kijutsu] is typically used for…
Japanese vocabulary: crime words
Japan is one of the safest countries in the world, but not without its share of problems. Mostly, these problems amount to stolen bicycles and umbrellas (I had my own bicycle stolen last fall). Recently I played through 龍が如く３ (English title: Yakuza 3) on Playstation 3, so I had a chance to polish my crime vocabulary a little bit. Here’s a list of crime-related words which may or may not have been found in the game.
天啓
てんけい [tenkei] – A divine revelation.
Not simply messages from God (which are actually pretty uncommon, I hear)…
悪阻
つわり [tsuwari] – This ominous combination of kanji (evil 悪 and obstruction 阻) gives us the word for morning sickness (the early pregnancy symptom).
腹癒せ
はらいせ [haraise] – Literally, “soothing the stomach”. This expression refers to taking your anger out on something. In a strict definition…
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