Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary You've likely heard of "voiding the check." Well, today we'll be doing the inverse—checking the void. That is, we'll look at more ways in which 空 conveys a sense of emptiness ... or even a yawning void! A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Empty Empty the mind, empty the mind. That's supposed to be the goal of meditation. But what if people really were empty? That wouldn't be optimal, according to this compound: 空け者 (utsukemono: fool, idiot, dunce)                 empty + person On Options forInsulting Someone ... When 空 has the kun-yomi utsuke, it means "empty-headed" or even "dumb"!... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Musically and astronomically, we know about the dark side of the moon. But what about the dark side of the sky—or rather, the dark side of the "sky" kanji, 空? As I mentioned in my last blog (when discussing 空々しい　(sorazorashii: false, hypocritical) and 空手形 (karategata: bad check; empty promise)), 空 has a seamy side. This kanji often means "fake" or "sham." Take, for example, these words: 空名 (kūmei: empty name; false reputation)             fake + name 空夢 (sorayume: fabricated... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary A Japanese friend wrote a tongue-twister and presented it to me in rōmaji, challenging me to convert the words into kanji and hiragana. I did fine until I encountered this line: Kono bin itsu kara kara, kinō kara kara, ototoi kara kara? I associate kara with "from" and "because," so I thought the repeated kara kara phrases might have meant "because it's from." Wrong! For every kara that appeared before a punctuation mark, I should have written 空, meaning "empty" in this case. For The Answer tothe Kara Kara Puzzle ... Just as kara has multiple personalities, so does 空. Look at all its yomi! KŪ: sky, empty a(keru): to empty, leave blank kara, kara(ppo):... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary When a Japanese friend emailed me a recipe, one ingredient jumped out at me: 玉ねぎ (tamanegi: onion). I hadn't realized that "onion" contains 玉 (GYOKU, tama), the character for "jewel." I momentarily enjoyed thinking of onions as the gems of the vegetable world! As I soon found, though, 玉- is also a prefix meaning "spherical" or "round." That's the sense 玉- conveys in 玉ねぎ. On 玉- as a Prefix Meaning "Spherical" ... Oh, well. Seeing the 玉 of 玉ねぎ as "round" is a little more mundane than imagining a white onion as the pearl of the produce store, a yellow onion as a topaz, or a red onion as a ruby! On Jewels ofMany Colors ... The "onion" compound isn't the only food... Show more

Golden Week is here and what better way to celebrate than with an Instant 25% Savings on ANY Basic or Premium JapanesePod101.com subscription. With the country closing down for almost a week, everyone in Japan will surely enjoy something good. At JapanesePod101.com we don’t want you to miss out! Make this year's Golden Week a memorable one by taking advantage of this limited time offer! Simply enter coupon code GOLDENWEEK in the coupon field provided during the registration process to take advantage of this incredible opportunity. New to JapanesePod101.com? * Click here to SAVE 25% and Sign Up for a New Subscription * Coupon Code: GOLDENWEEK * Expiration Date: Saturday, May 5th, 2007 at 11:59pm EST Previously a JapanesePod101.com... Show more

We are pleased to announce that very soon we'll be a launching a new header and footer design on JapanesePod101.com. Here are the key changes that will be introduced in the new design: New Header Navigation - We conveniently separated out "Help Center", "About Us", and "Contact Us" from the main header menu to reduce the clutter and improve navigation. Footer Quick Links – We expanded the number of links available in the footer to allow users to quickly and easily access the information they seek. A Fresh New Look - Last but not least, we felt it was time to give the header and footer a fresh new look. We hope you like what you see and find the navigational tools overall more useful. Below is a screenshot of the new header and... Show more

Brandon Fogerty, a talented young programmer from Georgia and a long time community member of JapanesePod101.com has just finished coding a beta version of an Installer application for our iLearning Center. This incredible application, which is currently in beta and available only for Windows users, simplifies the installation process of the lesson notes and sound zip files on the iPod by automating the entire process and removing the need to unzip, drag, and drop the the files manually. Premium subscribers who currently use the iLearning Center and are interested in beta testing this fantastic installer can get started by following these 3 simple steps: Step 1: Read the PDF Installation Guide, which outlines the requirements and... Show more

Mina-san, Blogging at JapanesePod101.com has just reached a whole new level. And if saying so isn't enough, we even gave our blog its own new website. That's right, JapanesePod101.com Blogs has arrived. The new blog features a fresh, clutter-free design, an infrastructure that can support several independent blogs, and a completely new category structure. We have a number of individual contributors who will be writing about various topics related to Japan and the Japanese language from their own unique vantage points. Max in Shanghai features Max, a student of Chinese and a JapanesePod101.com listener, discussing his Japanese learning adventures while living in China. Megumi's Matters features the thoughts and musings of... Show more

Mina-san, As many of you heard in the Saturday's news, JapanesePod101.com will be taking five days next week, February 19th through the 23rd, to take a look at everything that we've done over the past year, and then shuffle it all into order. Things are non-stop around here, with a small team constantly working to bring you, the listeners, high-quality content, released daily. With such a rush, it's easy for things to get a bit messy! That's why it's time to do a little spring cleaning here at JapanesePod101.com. Not only will we be getting things in order behind the scenes, but the improvements to our web site just keep continuing. Our blog, long neglected, will be brought back to life in a whole new way, with a whole new design. We... Show more

Mina-san, It's been a busy few weeks here at JapanesePod101.com... on top of the recently launched Learning Center v2.0 and the Premium Podcast Feed, today we updated our homepage. Now when you visit our homepage, you'll see a new and streamlined 2-column design that makes it easier and faster than ever to find the information you're looking for. Take a look and tell us what you think by leaving us a comment or sending us an email at support@japanesepod101.com. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu. JapanesePod101.com