Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Today we're going to start with a quiz. • What is fragment + writing? • What is word + fragment? While considering this conundrum, you can read quotations about fragments. I'm hoping these quotes will block the answers from view as you ponder the issue .... " firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles,—but much more so, when he laughs, that it adds something to this Fragment of Life." —Laurence Sterne (1713–1768), British author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Need a hint? OK, here you go: • Fragment + writing: 葉書 • Word + fragment: 言葉 "Every woman is like a time zone. She is a nocturnal fragment of your journey. She... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary In the last blog, we saw how poetic leaf-related words can be. But don't let these words lull you into thinking that Japanese is always abstract and dreamy! Far from it. Many leaf-related words have astounding and even crazy degrees of specificity. For instance, we already saw two words about fallen leaves in the last blog. Here's yet another term in that vein, this one emphasizing that the fallen leaves have become wet: 濡れ落葉 (nureochiba: wet fallen leaves)     to get wet + to fall + leaf With the water radical making a double appearance in the compound, these leaves certainly look wet! The appears inside 落 because 洛 originally meant... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary With autumn in the air, the "leaf" kanji 葉 beckons, just asking to be explored. Its shape might look rather daunting, but if you break 葉 into three pieces, it's much less intimidating. Let's put that leaf under a microscope:   葉   At the top, we find the grass radical . Under that, we see 世, which means "world" (as in 世界, sekai: world, world + world). And at the bottom lies 木 (ki: tree). A leafy world consists of grass and trees! Under ordinary circumstances, the tree would be above the grass, but never mind. Autumn Passage, Wasatch Mountains, UtahPhoto credit: Elizabeth Carmel   Yomi, Yomi, Yomi, I Got Leaves in My Tummy Huh? ... The yomi for... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary How much space lies between human beings? Are we naturally gregarious or solitary? Perhaps we're not unlike wolves, who nestle tightly in a cave at night, drawing on each other's warmth, then stumbling out in the morning when there's no more oxygen. If so, then those jammed together in an Indian tenement slum would seem to have achieved the most natural form of life. Kanji and Ria, two “wolves” huddling for warmth and safetyas they brave the wild. Or are we most naturally ourselves when acres lie between us? Maybe Thoreau knew most about what suits humans—peaceful solitude in which to think deep thoughts. I recently learned of fourteen families in Ohio who... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Tim Page's recent New Yorker essay "Parallel Play" contained this wonderful passage: Falling in love surprised me; I had never imagined sustained contentment, and certainly not in the company of another person. Yet here it was: even making the bed together in the morning ... took on meaning, as the prelude to another gloriously ordinary day, to be followed by tea, the newspapers, a couple hours of work, and then lunch in the neighborhood. "Another gloriously ordinary day"! Life offers many more gloriously ordinary days than heightened moments. And yet we tend to focus on the big events, the mountaintops, somehow overlooking the valleys in between, the hours that make... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary From the last blog, you know all about men, particularly 男 (DAN, NAN, otoko: man). And you've likely seen 間 in 時間 (jikan: time), which breaks down as hours + interval. So perhaps you'll be as surprised as I to find that 間 combines with 男 to mean "adultery, adulterer" (間男: maotoko). What does 間 contribute to this word? It's tricky to figure out, because 間 has quite a few meanings. I know 間 commonly means "space." Does 間男 imply that a man commits adultery because he needs space from his wife?! But 間 can also refer to rooms. So does the 間 in 間男 refer to the room in which an adulterer proves his manhood? Then again, 間 can mean "timing, situation, occasion," as in... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary My friend Tom seems to provoke Mother Nature's wrath wherever he goes. When he stayed with friends in Michigan last month, a freak windstorm made them lose power for two days. Six months earlier, he visited Titusville, Florida, and a severe tornado arrived at precisely the same time. Not long before that, a tornado accompanied him to Olney, Maryland. When Tom was just six, a tornado hit his family's farm in Illinois. Although the family recovered and rebuilt the garage, another tornado took that one out, as well. Coincidences? I think not. Apparently, Tornado Tom is not the only person with these powers, as the Japanese have a similar concept: 雨男 (ameotoko: man whose... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary You know that wedding reception table where the bride and groom seat misfits who don't belong at any other table? Well, that oddball table is ours today! We'll feast on a smorgasbord of random, cool things pertaining to 中. Speaking of seating, we encountered two seat-related compounds in the last blog: 中座 (chūza: leaving before an event (e.g., a meeting) is over)      in the middle + gathering 座中 (zachū: in the room, gathering, theatrical troupe)     gathering + in the middle My definition of 座 as "gathering" may have seemed strange to you; 座 (ZA, suwa(ru)) more commonly means "seat" or "to sit." Actually, the... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary In the last blog, we saw how -中 is a powerhouse of a suffix. For instance, adding -中 to 日本 (Nihon: Japan) gives us 日本中 (Nihonjū: all over Japan, throughout Japan). What emphasis -中 throws on a compound! With that in mind, here's a quick quiz. What does 訪中 (hōchū) mean? One hint: 訪 (HŌ, tazu(neru)) means "to visit." Take some time to think.... Can you hear the Jeopardy music in the background? OK, time's up. It's certainly tempting to interpret 訪中 as "throughout a visit." But no, 訪中 produces a kanji gotcha! In this case, 中 means "China," so 訪中 is a "visit to China"! This raises a new question: Whenever 中 appears in a compound, does the character refer to China or... Show more

Mina-san, Marky here! As you can probably tell, JapanesePod101.com is truly a labor of love for us! We love learning and teaching Japanese and honestly, we’re having a lot of fun. But we’re always trying to think of ways to improve what we’re doing or thinking “how can we do something different?” And often the best ideas come from you all! Introducing 2 new Tracks added to the Premium Feed! The Review Track A lot of people have asked us to leave some blank space when introducing vocab so they could have some time to repeat and practice. Well, if you’ve been with us a while, you know we tried a while back. We had some good feedback about that, but it dragged the podcasts on with silence and ate up time for going through... Show more