UPDATE: maintenance has been temporarily delayed but will resume again on Saturday, August 9th at 10pm EST thank you for your patience It’s time for scheduled maintenance at JapanesePod101.com. On Saturday, August 9th at 6am EST, JapanesePod101.com will go down for several hours. When it returns, there may be a few small quirks which will be ironed out ASAP. What can you expect when the sites go live again? Well, most of the changes are “under the hood” so you probably won’t be able to appreciate them fully right away (you will soon). What you will get right away is: 1. A new and improved vocabulary flashcards with audio that are more intuitive and easy to use. 2. A new sample sentence expansion section with audio in the... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary In the last blog, we encountered the following words: 順境 (junkyō: favorable circumstances, prosperity)     favorable + situation 環境 (kankyō: environment, situation)     to surround + situation Clearly, 境 (KYŌ, KEI, sakai: boundary, situation) is clamoring for a closer look. For starters, it might help to crank up the size: 境 Taken alone, 境 strikes me as a cute, perky kanji—perhaps a distant cousin of 意 (I: will, heart, mind). Given that 境 breaks down into recognizable, simple components (土, 立, 日, and 儿), it's not at all unfriendly. On the Etymology of 境 ... But when it appears in 環境, I feel nearly blinded... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Last week, I dangled a promise before you. I said that reading 順 words about organizing objects would help you think more clearly. This week, I'm willing to bet that another set of 順 words will have a very different effect. As we saw last time in a discussion of etymology, 順 (JUN) can mean "order, sequence." But this character can also mean "to obey, submit to, follow." And that's just what bothers me! To be sure, compliance has its uses. When we "go with the flow," life becomes considerably easier. The following compound helps make that happen: 順応 (junnō: to adapt or conform to)     to submit to + to respond to (a situation) This word... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary In the last blog, we saw this word: 身長順 (shinchōjun: in order of height)     body + length + order I love all the sharp geometry in these kanji—the way a few diagonals offset the neat horizontals and verticals. But aside from that, here's what jumped out at me when I found this word in the dictionary: 順 (JUN: sequence, compliance) I'd never seen this kanji before. And I was intrigued that river (川) + head (頁) could mean "order." There's order at the head of the river? The Etymology of 順 ... The Meaning of 頁 ... If you want to put things in order, then 順 is your kanji. This character isn't sexy or mysterious. Rather, it's... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Long time no see! Speaking of length, last time we looked at 長 (CHŌ, naga), which usually means "long" or "chief." In that discussion, we encountered the following word: 足長 (ashinaga: long-leggedness)     legs + long And we saw how this compound puts the long legs in daddy longlegs: 足長おじさん (ashinaga-ojisan: daddy longlegs) Although people usually write ojisan (uncle) in hiragana, you can also represent this word with 叔父さん, which breaks down as uncle + father. On Daddy Longlegs (the Spiders) ... Other Animals with Length to Them ... Something Really Odd ... What happens if we take those long legs and turn them on... Show more

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Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Welcome to summer! With the longest days upon us, it seems fitting to take a look at the character for "long": 長 (CHŌ, naga(i): long) This kanji can also mean "chief, head, leader," but today, for the most part, I'm only interested in its length. I love how 長 elongates the following things in the most charming of ways:   穴  (ana: hole)          長穴  (naga-ana: slot)     円  (en or maru: circle)        長円  (chōen: ellipse, oval)     靴   (kutsu:... Show more

Did you know that the lowest-scoring section of the JLPT Exam is the listening section? Luckily, PlaySay's JLPT 1-4 Vcabulary and Kanji Audio Downloads, now available in the JapanesePod101.com online store, are here to save the day! New Version 1.2 Released! PlaySay's convenient audio download system will simply and practically enable you to achieve oral vocabulary competency - on the go, one word at a time, one minute at a time. Supplement your JapanesePod101.com studies, and turn your iPod or favorite mp3 player into a walking, talking, dynamic, and intelligent vocabulary flashcards study tool. Shuffle and study all individual JLPT Core Vocabulary and Kanji with audio on your iPod or other mp3 Player! A Combined... Show more

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Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary When you feel uneasy, where do you sense it in your body? Perhaps you feel "butterflies" deep in your belly. Maybe you become lightheaded. You could even get cold feet! Two Japanese expressions about uneasiness make use of a kanji we've seen for two weeks running: 騒 (SŌ, sawa(gu): clamor, noise, disturbance; to make a fuss) Both expressions locate uneasiness in the chest: 心騒ぎ (kokoro sawagi: uneasiness)     heart + disturbance One could see this expression as referring to a disturbance in the heart. Or given the many meanings of 騒, one could interpret 心騒ぎ as noise in the heart! Not an ear-splitting noise, of course. Rather, it might... Show more