If you are in Japan for business or travel, or meeting you Japanese friend's family in your own country, we are sure you would love to impress your Japanese hosts. But you have heard that Japanese is difficult and a mistake can cause great confusion or trouble. Don't worry! Here we bring you some useful tips for that sucessful first meeting: "Kon'nichi wa. Watashi wa desu" こ んにちは。　わたしは です My name is . in this sentence, こんにちは Kon'nichi wa is the Japanese equivalent of "hello" and can be used at any time of day. わ たし Watashi is a polite way for males or females to say "I" or "me." は wa is a particle that follows the topic you are going to be talking about. です Desu is called a copula, and refers to one type... Show more

Can you imagine offering to buy your new girlfriend a box of "rain" while shopping in Tokyo instead of "candy?" Impressive if you can pull it off, but not much help if she has a sweet tooth! When you can hear and say the pitch properly in Japanese, you won't be caught making embarrassing mistakes! Pitch accent refers to a characteristic of language where every syllable can be pronounced with a high or low pitch. Pitch accent is considered different from the concepts of stress and tone that appear in English and Chinese, respectively. English: Stress Chinese: Tones Japanese: Pitch Some assert that English has over 30,000 syllabic sounds. In contrast, Japanese has only 111 (112, according to some linguists). There are many... Show more

Because the range of syllables (spoken and written) in Japanese is limited, we cannot properly render many foreign sounds in Japanese. And as many more foreign words are used daily in Japanese, the solution was the addition of "new" katakana characters. Here are a few of the more common ones: FA FI FE FO example words: ファイル fairu ("file" ) ; フィンランド Finrando ("Finland" ) ;　 サンタフェ Santa fe ("Santa Fe" ) ;  アイフォン aifon ("iPhone" ) VA VI VU VE VO example words: ヴァイオリン vaiorin  ( "violin" ) ;  ヴィクトリア Vikutoria  ("Victoria" (name)) ;  デジャヴ deja vu ("déjà vu" ) ;  ラスヴェガス Rasu Vegasu ("Las Vegas" ) TI TU Pronounced in English as "tee" and "too." ... Show more

Have you noticed that in words like shika ("deer" ) and hiku ("to pull" ), the "i" sound is almost inaudible?  This often happens also at the ends of the grammatical endings desu and masu, which are pronounced and , respectively. We call this devoicing "i" and "u". That means that they become almost "whispered." This happens when these vowels come between two of the voiceless consonants: p, t, k, s, or h. Also, you will notice that in Japanese, there are some sound syllable sounds that don't exist. For example: "si" doesn't exist, but is replaced by "shi". "ti" becomes "chi" and "tu  which becomes "tsu" "hu" doesn't exist, "fu" is used. However, the "fu" sound is a lot lighter than in English. (To make the sound, blow... Show more

This Japanese All About lesson will teach you five critical words and phrases you need to know to get around Japan unscathed-and without offending anyone who might be helpful to you. You'll learn how to say "please," "yes," and "thanks,"-and, just in case you do overstep your bounds, you'll also learn "I'm sorry" in Japanese. Sumimasen (すみません) "Excuse me" / "I'm sorry" / "Thanks"Sumimasen is a versatile phrase with a few different meanings depending on the situation, the closest of which is "excuse me." Doumo (どうも) "Thanks" / "Hi" Domo is a simple and easy way to say "thank you" as well as greet someone. Douzo (どうぞ) "Please go ahead" / "Please" If you're offering something to someone or would like someone to go ahead of... Show more